Wages of Sin

by J M Gregson

  He grunted what might have been a thanks, then flung open the door. ‘Have a good weekend, love. And take care! I must be away.’

  It was a dismissal. He was round at the other side of the car and into the driver’s seat without another look at her. She had scarcely time to snatch her pants up from the floor and slam the rear door shut. The car’s engine roared into life as she moved uncertainly over the uneven ground on her high heels. The big car moved swiftly past her and back to the street they had left, its headlights briefly brilliant on the wet cobbles left from a vanished age.

  Sarah took a deep breath and pulled her scarf up over her chin and her jacket tight about her slim shoulders. This last encounter of her first week had been easier than she had expected. She hadn’t envisaged it happening in the back of a car, with the foetid smell of disuse in her nostrils and the man not troubling even to know her name. But he hadn’t hurt her, hadn’t asked her to do any of the things which lurked among those secret fears she could scarcely formulate. And she had her money: her fingers felt yet again at that reassuring paper in her pocket.

  She could take a short cut back to her bed-sit from here, get herself a shower and a warm drink in front of the telly. She was finding her feet in this lucrative game – that was the important thing. There’d be more and better pickings to come in the weeks ahead.

  She thought she heard a footstep behind her as she strode through the back entry. She didn’t see anything when she looked fearfully back over her shoulder, but it was too dark here to discern anything clearly. She wished now that she had taken the longer way home, beneath the high, comforting lights of the street.

  She tried to hurry, but the tightness of her skirt and the highness of her heels did not allow speed, especially over the uneven cobbles which had been laid a hundred and thirty years ago and never altered since those palmy days of the old cotton town. She was certain this time that she caught the noise of someone behind her. She would have called out, but her voice was stilled in her throat. Fear dropped silent as a cat on to her back.

  She didn’t stand a chance. It was the scarf which was the instrument of her downfall. Strong hands pulled it from behind her, so that it snapped down from her chin to her neck as if it had been a steel cord. In twenty seconds she was dead, her throat crushed by the scarf as her limbs thrashed briefly and hopelessly at the damp air.

  The arms which lifted Sarah Dunne’s body found it surprisingly light.

  Two

  It was Monday morning and Chief Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker was feeling depressed.

  He had endured a trying weekend with his wife, Barbara, who was built like a Wagnerian soprano and just as bellicose. She had carried him off to her parents’ house and he had been forced to make conversation instead of watching the television. That was unreasonable enough, but Barbara had required him to address the family at large upon his most recent triumphs in detection.

  As these didn’t exist, he had been sorely taxed. Modesty was not an option with Barbara hanging upon every word of his heroic tale, but Tucker was a man of limited imagination and his well of invention soon ran dry. He had looked forward to Monday morning as a welcome deliverance.

  That was another mistake. These days there was no relief for him at work. His role as Head of the CID section in the Brunton police had always been a nominal one: he was an expert at seizing the praise for his staff’s successes and dodging the brickbats for their failures. For eight years, the system had worked well: Tucker had basked in far more adulation than abuse, since the Brunton clear-up rate on serious crime was as good as any in the country.

  The man his staff knew as Tommy Bloody Tucker had been Superintendent Tucker the super-sleuth in the eyes of the public. He was a good front-man: urbane, silver-haired, immaculately uniformed, ready with a quote for the media and a smiling acceptance of their plaudits for his latest brilliant piece of detection. His superiors knew what the real story was, of course, but that was the system. If you carried the rank, you collected the rewards.

  The other side of the coin was that if things went wrong it came back to you like a load of wet sewage. And in the last year, things had been going seriously wrong at Brunton CID. It had all happened since Superintendent Tucker had been promoted to Chief Super. It had been no more than his due, as far as Barbara was concerned, and she had trumpeted the promotion loud and long at coffee mornings and among the ladies attached to the men who attended Tucker’s Masonic lodge.

  The snag was that Tucker had had to ensure that Detective Inspector Peach had been promoted at the same time to Chief Inspector.

  Percy Peach carried the bumbling Tucker upon his sturdy Atlas shoulders. He was a thief-taker, a cop respected by cops, a cop whose reputation among serious villains carried much further than the patch of town and country in north-east Lancashire where he hunted down killers and fraudsters.

  It was inconceivable that Tommy Bloody Tucker could make Chief Superintendent without taking Peach, the man who had preserved and enhanced his reputation for so many years, up the ladder with him. So Percy Peach, coppers’ copper and villains’ scourge, had been promoted to Chief Inspector, a rank supposedly abolished but still found useful by police promotion boards.

  The snag from Tucker’s point of view was that he was deprived of Peach’s services in CID. The police rules said that anyone promoted to Chief Inspector should spend a year in uniform. It was daft, but there was no escaping the rule. Tucker consoled himself with the fact that he would at least be rid of the taunts of the egregious Peach, who exploited his usefulness to his chief quite shamelessly.

  The paradox for the Superintendent was that the man who had made his reputation for him, the man who had made police committees purr over his efficiency, had also made his daily life a misery with his insolence. Well aware that Tucker could not afford to transfer or demote him, Percy Peach had amused himself by seeing just how far he could go in baiting the man who in theory directed his working life.

  It had been nice to be rid of him. Detective Inspector Collins, the man who had taken over from Peach, had been pleasingly obsequious. For a little while, Tucker had thought how splendid it would be to be get rid of Peach for ever.

  The euphoria had lasted less than a month. Collins and the other inspectors demanded day-to-day direction, and Tucker was no good at that. He told them they must use their initiatives: his job was to maintain an overview of the situation. So they took their own decisions, and made mistakes, which came back to him. He tried to rally the troops with inspirational addresses, but they attended dutifully and then asked awkward questions about responsibilities.

  So, as things went from bad to worse, Tucker gave them bollockings: he’d always fancied himself as rather good at those. They listened sullenly, without the interruptions Peach would have made. But the bollockings had no effect. The CID men below him played things by the book, and Tucker was required to do the job he could not do. He was forced to direct investigations instead of maintaining his lofty overview, and he made embarrassing mistakes.

  It was very nearly a year now since Peach had left the CID fold. He could be out of uniform and back in the CID soon, but Tucker was determined to do without him. He would work his way through to retirement without that unique form of mock-obsequious insolence which was Peach’s forte, whatever the cost.

  On this grey and gloomy Monday morning, when the November cloud hung low over the drab old cotton town, that cost seemed considerable. There was a sheaf of statistics comparing the Brunton crime clear-up rates with those of other areas in the north-west: it made melancholy reading. There was a memo from the Chief Constable which was no more than a terse command to see him at eleven thirty that morning to review these figures.

  There was also a query from the custody sergeant as to whether he should release the four men being held in connection with an Asian/British National Party punch-up in the town centre early on Sunday night. ‘We’ve got to charge ’em or enlarge them, and their briefs are gett
ing lippy,’ that grizzled officer told him succinctly, and stood waiting for a decision.

  ‘Hold them a bit longer. I’ve got DCs out in the town trying to get witnesses to the violence,’ said Tucker importantly.

  ‘The Asian brief’s asking to see you, sir,’ said the custody sergeant implacably. ‘Says if we’re holding them any longer he wants to know the reason why, and he wants to hear it from the top man. Says if they’re not out of the slammer by ten thirty he’ll be claiming racial discrimination on behalf of his Paki clients.’

  ‘We can’t have that,’ said Tucker unhappily.

  ‘No, sir. Shall I tell that lippy lawyer you’ll be down to tell him the reason why we’re holding his men?’

  Tucker squirmed in his big leather chair, stared unhappily down at the centre of his huge executive desk. ‘Let them go,’ he said almost inaudibly.

  ‘Very well, sir. And what about these National Front lads? They’re keeping shtum as yet, but they’ve got tattoos bigger than their IQs, if you ask me.’

  Tucker mused unhappily, wondering how he could inject energy and enthusiasm into his troops. ‘What those cocky young sods need is a good grilling, Sergeant. They don’t like being locked up, you know, and it makes them nervous in the end. They might even break down and confess, with skilled interrogation.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I can see that. Will you be down to question them yourself, sir?’

  ‘No, of course I won’t. I’ve far more important people to be dealing with than petty thugs.’ Tucker gestured vaguely at his vast expanse of empty desk.

  The custody sergeant followed his gaze and paused. ‘All the experienced CID staff are out and about, sir, on your orders. The National Front brief’s getting a bit stroppy as well, you see, sir. Bright young feller, unfortunately – knows that even thugs have their legal rights. He’s been wondering aloud about whether some of their wounds might have been inflicted in custody, rather than in the fight last night. Even muttering about wrongful arrest, though I don’t think he can make that stick. Don’t suppose you’d care to have a word with him, sir? Put him right about the law and where he stands, from your detailed knowledge?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. I’m far too busy to go tangling with young lawyers still wet behind the ears. Oh, I suppose you’d better let them go, if that’s really the best we can do!’ Tucker cast his eyes to heaven theatrically at the incompetence with which he was surrounded.

  The custody sergeant went back down the stairs and did what he’d known he would do all along: he released the men involved in the weekend fracas with no more than an official caution. It was inevitable, without a better case to offer the CPS, but at least he had played it by the book and made Tommy Bloody Tucker take the decision.

  It proved to be the wrong decision, from the Superintendent’s point of view. When he saw the Chief Constable at eleven thirty, he was told that there was to be a firm policy on all racial violence. Trouble was to be nipped in the bud at source by decisive police intervention. ‘So let’s make an example of these ruffians who got involved in last night’s violence,’ said the CC. ‘Let’s show them who’s in charge of this particular manor.’

  Chief Superintendent Tucker had to confess they’d been released. ‘The custody sergeant was insistent,’ he said. ‘I was reluctant to let them go, but I didn’t think we’d enough for the Crown Prosecution Service to take on the case.’

  This time it was Tucker who was on the wrong end of the bollocking. Chief Constables used phrases like ‘surprised and disappointed’ and ‘marked decline in the efficiency of the CID section’ and ‘very disturbing figures’ rather than the more basic language further down the ranks, but both men realized that this was a severe bollocking.

  When Tucker described it as such with a sickly smile, hoping for some conciliatory words to end the meeting, the CC responded with a curt, ‘That’s good, then. A bollocking it is. At least we understand each other!’ and dismissed him without a smile.

  Chief Superintendent Tucker went back to his office and sat with his head in his hands. He was too upset even to do the calculations about his pension with which he usually consoled himself on such occasions. There were far too many days like this to endure before his retirement. They stretched away interminably before him in his imagination, like the rows of Banquo’s heirs in Macbeth’s vision of the future.

  It was all very well his staff being obsequious, but there was no one around equal to the task of carrying him.

  He was contemplating lunch when the news came in of a serious incident, a bank raid in Clitheroe. The masked gunmen had got clear away with a large but so far undefined sum in used notes.

  There was also a body by the railway line in Pleasington, on the other side of Brunton: possibly a suspicious death.

  Thomas Bulstrode Tucker swallowed his pride and reached for the phone. ‘Get me Chief Inspector Peach!’ he said grimly.

  The day was so gloomy that the early winter dusk was mingling with the night by the time the children got out of school at four o’clock.

  The cars had their lights on and, as the boys came through the school gates, the street lights came on abruptly above their heads, making what little remained of the daylight even less apparent. There was a thin mist of drizzle in the air. It was a depressing evening, even for twelve-year-old boys newly released from the classroom.

  Tommy Caton had his red hair cut very short. It had seemed a good idea at the time, almost as short as the cuts he saw on some of the footballers he watched on television, but now he felt a chill about the back of his scrawny neck that he could not acknowledge without losing face. On this bitter evening, he would have welcomed the balaclava helmet that his gran had knitted for him and which he had treated with such derision as soon as she had left the house.

  He flapped his thin arms and tried to banish the cold by the energy he put into his shrill cries to his companions, as they trotted through the familiar streets towards home. There were a dozen of them at first, but the group became smaller as boys and girls peeled off at each street junction to go to their homes.

  Tommy lived furthest from the school, and presently there were just he and Jamie Betts left, kicking a battered lager can to each other across one of the town’s few remaining cobbled streets and pretending to be racing down the field for the Rovers. They had known each other for almost as long as they could remember, these two. They had gone through junior school together and been delighted to find themselves together in the same first-year class at the comprehensive.

  A sour-faced woman at the door of one of the mean brick terraced houses called them noisy little beggars and told them not to play football in the street. Tommy picked the can up and they got to the corner before pulling horrid faces in concert at the closed door of the woman’s house. They didn’t shout anything: they were getting too near home to take risks.

  Tommy dropped the can again when they got round the back of the houses, on a patch of unpaved ground where a mill had been felled and not yet replaced with new buildings. There was no danger of cars here. All they had to do was avoid the puddles of grey water in the potholes of the uneven surface. Tommy wove a swift path between the water with the can at his feet, shouting his own excited commentary: ‘And it’s Damien Duff on the wing for the Rovers! He beats one man! He beats another! And he gets his cross in as he reaches the goal line!’

  He flicked the ball at right angles as he came to the wall at the end of the waste ground, and Jamie Betts met it expertly on the half-volley, yelling, ‘Goooooaaal!’ in that long drawn-out roar of triumph they shared with the crowd at the Rovers’ matches on Saturday afternoons.

  ‘You put it over the bar!’ said Tommy, panting with bright-eyed excitement from his sprint down the wing.

  ‘Top corner. Goalie had no chance. Nearly broke the net!’ Jamie swung his right foot in happy remembrance of the strike. ‘Good as Alan Shearer, that one was!’ They were too young to have seen the folk-hero with the Rovers, but they saw him still on telev
ision.

  ‘I reckon you just missed. It wouldn’t have gone in there if you’d hit the goal,’ said Tommy. He pointed towards the broken door of a decrepit hut in the corner of the site and the black hole where their tin had disappeared.

  ‘I was aiming for that!’ claimed Jamie, with the prompt and shameless improvisation which comes naturally to twelve-year-old boys. But he already had a grasp of the diplomacy that could end arguments. ‘It were a smashing centre, though, Tom. Right on to my instep as I came in on goal.’

  They went forward together to retrieve the can which had become a football. It was almost dark now, and Tommy Caton paused for a moment before ducking into the cave of blackness beyond the broken door. You couldn’t say you were frightened by a bit of darkness: fear was for girls. All the same, he made sure that Jamie Betts was following him as he went into the hut.

  Jamie was right when he claimed to have caught his shot just right. The can had gone well into the centre of the hut. They could see it gleaming dully as their eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom.

  But there was something else, too. A sweet, heavy smell. Not a pleasant smell. The panting boys sucked the odour deep into their lungs, even as they gasped that they did not wish to do that.

  There was something beyond them, against the rotting boards at the far end of the shed. Something which had human form, but which lay with its limbs oddly disposed upon the floor, as if it was not human after all, but some life-sized puppet which had been dropped here. It had a skirt, and legs protruding below the skirt which were lifelike, and yet had no life at all.

  Tommy did not want to touch it. He saw a hand reaching out towards the thing in the dimness, and it took him an instant to realize that the thin fingers belonged to him. Those fingers were still cold, but the flesh they touched below the skirt was much colder: cold as any marble.