Wages of Sin

by J M Gregson

  Peach was working hard to keep calm, fearing that if he betrayed his own excitement, the girl would become even more nervous and clam up. ‘Did he offer you any violence?’

  ‘Not exactly. But I felt that if I didn’t get away from him he was going to. I had a chiffon scarf round my neck. He had his hands on it and I felt it tightening.’

  ‘But you got away.’

  ‘Yes. A car appeared at the corner, so I tore myself away from him and hurried off down the street’

  ‘Didn’t you run?’

  She smiled for the first time since she had come into the room. ‘You don’t run very fast, in a tight skirt and the kind of heels you use for our job.’

  He grinned back at her. ‘Of course you don’t. Did he follow you?’

  ‘No. I was expecting him to, but he didn’t. Maybe the car put him off. It was moving down the street towards him. I looked back when I got to the corner. The man was still beneath the lamp where I had left him. He was staring down at his hands.’

  ‘Right. We’ll have as full a description as you can give us, before you go. And we’d like you to look at some mugshots of men who have a record of violence.

  Toyah Burgess nodded, resigned now to giving them all the help she could. She downed the rest of her tea, trying to control the violent shivering which was suddenly shaking her slim frame.

  Like the other two people in the room, she was wondering if the man who had killed Sarah Dunne had laid his fingers upon her throat last night.

  Seventeen

  David Strachan looked out of the window at the spire of the Catholic church. It stood tall and thin against the blue sky of the late autumn afternoon, seeming to soar even higher in the crispness of the cold, clear day. They said this Preston church had the second highest in the country, with only Salisbury Cathedral reaching higher towards heaven. The sun was setting over the Fylde coast, ten miles to the west, making the blue of the sky even deeper for the last hour of the day. Soon it would be dark, and Strachan could hardly wait for that to happen.

  The manager of the textile warehouse was exceptionally long-winded, in David’s view. He was going to renew the contract for the computers and their servicing. That had been fairly clear from the outset, but this plump, middle-aged man with the glasses on the end of his nose and the fringe of grey hair around his balding pate was not going to be rushed. He had ordered tea to be brought up for his meeting with David. It was a courtesy the sales representative would normally have appreciated, but today he just wanted to have the business side of his day completed and be away to anticipate the wilder pleasures of the night.

  Miss Whiplash had grown in erotic stature through his anticipation of the last few days, her allure more that of a voluptuous femme fatale than that of a buxom prostitute running a little to seed, which was the reality. He had gone over and over in his mind the things they would do together, the way he would threaten her, the way she would respond, imprisoning his limbs, watching him break the bonds and menace her anew in turn. They would lead each other on to wilder and wilder things. At this moment, it was very difficult for him to concentrate on the more mundane business of earning a living.

  ‘So when will the new models actually be available? And when do you propose to deliver and install our new system?’ The manager munched his digestive biscuit contentedly and looked at David Strachan over the top of his glasses.

  ‘The new PLCs will be on the market from the first of January. And we’ll have your new system up and running by the end of the month at the latest.’

  ‘If we decide that we need the refurbishment, of course.’ The manager smiled, applying the little turn of the screw that it was traditional for salesmen to suffer.

  ‘Of course. But I think you’d be foolish not to modernize, Mr Woolley. Especially at the rates we are now offering you.’

  Surely the old bugger wasn’t going to back out now? Surely he was just going through the motions, trying ineffectively to make the representative suffer? David visualized this old buffer with Miss Whiplash. He’d be frightened to death! It gave him confidence to think of the man like that. David tried not to let his contempt come out in his tone as he said, ‘We’ve agreed on the savings that an efficient system is going to afford you.’

  ‘You’ve produced certain figures, I agree. Shown how we could make savings. Theoretically, that is. I always suspect figures. Lies, damn lies and statistics, you know.’ The manager smiled patronizingly.

  Strachan hadn’t really the patience to begin to sell him the system all over again. He said, ‘You can take it from me, Mr Woolley, that what we are offering will make you a more effective unit. And you won’t beat us on price, either. I’m quite confident of that.’

  ‘More tea, Mr – er, Strachan, isn’t it?’ He filled up David’s cup without waiting for a reply. ‘Well, I’ll be perfectly honest, it seems to make sense to me. But I think I ought just to put it to our accountancy department, before we confirm the contract. Some smart young lads in there.’

  That’s what you were supposed to be doing between our last meeting and this one, thought David. Checking it out with your accountancy boys and coming back to me with any questions they raised. He forced a smile and said, ‘I can assure you that they won’t find any flaws in the scenario I’ve put to you, Mr Woolley. The computations we worked out and which I discussed with you a fortnight ago were based on your latest sales figures.’ He wondered if he dare risk a threat. He drank a large mouthful of his unwanted, lukewarm tea and took the plunge. ‘I wouldn’t like to see you go backwards in the queue for our new models. Not after the relationship we’ve built up and the esteem in which I now hold your business.’

  ‘I wasn’t really questioning the deal we’d worked out. I was only trying to give the young Turks in the accountancy department their say, but I wouldn’t like to jeopardize the relationship we’ve built up between us over the years.’ David heard the welcome sound of an executive back-tracking. Woolley stood up and proffered his hand. ‘You can take it as read that what we’ve agreed between us will go ahead. Let’s shake on that now.’

  In another ten minutes, David Strachan was out of the high Edwardian brick building and back in his car, scarcely feeling the cold of the November twilight. The sun had gone now, though the sky still showed red in the west. It was almost five o’clock. A few hours to kill yet before the excitements of the evening.

  With an order under his belt, he would award himself a leisurely meal in a decent place, with three courses and an unhurried perusal of the morning paper he had been too preoccupied to read earlier. He turned the Vectra towards the coast and an excellent restaurant he knew in Lytham St Annes, moving deliberately in the opposite direction from Brunton, a man postponing a treat to make it all the sweeter when it came.

  He would enjoy anticipating the drama, then relish even more the event itself. And the piece of rope lay clean and ready beneath his seat.

  DCI Peach looked at Detective Constable Pickering with practised repugnance. ‘I don’t suppose it’s anything to do with the case, but it’s got to be checked out, so get your arse over to Bolton, lad, and do the checking.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Could you just tell me what the background is, please? Let me know exactly what it is I’m supposed to be checking?’

  Peach regarded the fresh-faced eagerness above the gangling frame with distaste. Pickering was so much his physical opposite, so much the counter to his own stocky, muscled frame, the DC’s innocent features such a contrast to his own aggressive, experienced round face, that he felt bound to resent him. And at twenty-two, Pickering was a good sixteen years his junior: quite enough to warrant resentment in any man. Peach’s irritation was triggered on a bad day by the fact that Gordon Pickering looked both na?¨ve and gullible. The fact that the man within the lanky frame was neither gauche nor easily deceived was what had made Percy Peach select him for CID work. But there was no reason to remind him of that.

  Peach looked at the note in front of him. ‘Som
e bright spark over in Bolton has been on to us about what looks like a straightforward domestic. Apparently a nineteen-year-old girl’s been badly knocked about by some bloke. But this keen young constable has spotted that it happened here in Brunton. And being as the girl’s not very different in age from our murder victim, he thought there might just be a connection. Especially as the girl’s keeping shtum about who did it, despite her mother’s best efforts to make her talk.’

  ‘Needs checking out, sir, as you say. Can I take DC McNair with me?’

  ‘No you cannot, lad. You need to keep your mind on the job, not on your trousers.’ DC Alison McNair was the latest addition to Brunton CID, a nubile blonde with a soft Scottish accent.

  ‘Worth a try, sir.’ Pickering was shrewd enough to have divined by now that Peach’s bark was much worse than his bite, when he was dealing with colleagues rather than villains.

  Thirty miles away on the Fylde coast, Detective Inspector Boyd was more straightforward with his orders than Percy Peach. Perhaps in the Traffic Section of policing, routine was what was needed.

  A Tuesday night at the end of November in Blackpool was not going to cause many traffic problems, with the Illuminations over for the year and the landladies shutting down the guest houses and flying to Tenerife and Lanzarote. Tom Boyd left his instructions for the night, had a solitary drink in the pub near the station, and was microwaving a solitary meal at home by six thirty.

  The devil finds work for idle hands, they say. Perhaps it was some small, very personal devil working within Boyd which made idleness such a danger for him. He tried to watch television, but he could find nothing that engaged his attention. Almost before he knew what he was doing, he found himself outside again, sitting behind the wheel of his car. He sat there for quite some time before he made the inevitable move and started the engine.

  The Chief Constable had been a lot more sympathetic than Tom Boyd had expected. He’d said he’d give his Inspector every support with character references, if he was contacted by the CID at Brunton. Well, he deserved that: he’d kept his nose clean and done his job impeccably for twenty years and more: he wouldn’t have made Inspector if he hadn’t, would he? Nevertheless, he found that the CC’s assurance of support had cheered him up.

  He cruised past the road works on the A583, which he had been out to see earlier in the day, driving deliberately slowly, avoiding the M55 motorway, which would have whisked him eastwards, past Preston and towards danger. The east must be avoided. Inspector Boyd turned north, towards Lancaster and away from temptation. The Chief Constable certainly wouldn’t expect him to venture near Brunton again, after the warnings he’d had.

  And he wouldn’t. Even from his own selfish point of view, he would be committing professional suicide if he was caught looking for women in that area again. And he had too much bitter experience of rebuttals to believe that he could pick up sex without paying for it. He’d have a quiet drink in a country pub, maybe exchange gossip with the locals if they were friendly, and then go back to his empty, soulless house and his solitary bed.

  He found just the place when he turned off the main road and into the large village of Garstang. It was a friendly pub, with real ale, plenty of action around the dartboard, and locals ready to exchange conversation with him. He could spend a pleasant hour or two here, and then drive back to Blackpool as sedately as he had driven here.

  But the images which he had put aside thrust themselves back into his mind. Katie Clegg, tall and lithe, dark-haired and sultry, waving the handcuffs in front of his eyes with that challenging, provocative smile, seemed to beckon to him like some modern siren. She was the right age for him, Katie, young enough to be highly desirable, old enough to offer him the experience he wanted.

  He couldn’t think now why he’d ever bothered with the very young ones, who weren’t much more than kids. Katie Clegg was the one for him. He could almost feel her slim throat beneath his fingers, almost see the fear seeping into the wide brown eyes above the professional smile.

  Tom Boyd’s personal devil was active within him, fighting hard against the common sense and decorum which prevailed in the rest of his life, playing the trump card of lust at the key moment of the game. He forgot all about real ale and the conviviality of this pleasant place.

  Tom Boyd turned the Vectra towards Brunton and quickened his speed.

  Detective Constable Pickering was finding Mrs Pitt very difficult to deal with.

  She was around fifty and she treated him as if he was a callow youth in need of her counsel. ‘This should never have happened to her, you know. She’s obviously got in with a bad crowd since she’s left home.’ Her brow darkened as she glanced again at her daughter’s face. ‘I’d just like to have five minutes on my own with the so-called boyfriend who did this, I can tell you!’

  Gordon Pickering wondered how he could stem the tide and talk to the girl herself. Jenny Pitt didn’t help him much. She cast occasional helpless glances at her mother in full flow, then returned her gaze to the carpet, without even looking at the fresh-faced young DC.

  She certainly looked in need of care and attention. Her left eye was completely closed, and the swollen flesh around it was green and yellow, darkening into purple on the eyelid. In another day or so, this whole area of her face would be blue-black – a ‘shiner’ in the terms of the pub brawlers who often ended up in police hands, but something which seemed much worse in the shocked white face of an inexperienced young woman.

  Pickering wondered quite how inexperienced the girl was. She had obviously been anxious to get away from this over-protective home in semi-detached suburbia. But she had not just rented a room or a shared flat in her home town, as many girls anxious to break the domestic ties did. She had gone to another town altogether, and perhaps taken on a completely different way of life.

  As if she read these thoughts, Mrs Pitt said, ‘She’d a job lined up for her at her father’s firm, but would she take it? Too proud for that. Wanted to stand on her own two feet, she said. Wanted to make her own way in the world. The real world. Well, this is what the real world is like, Jenny. This is what happens to girls who don’t heed the warnings they were given!’

  She spoke harshly, unable to resist the triumphant vindication of her argument. Then her eyes came back to the distress in front of her and she put her arm round the shoulders of her unresisting daughter and drew her tightly against her. Jenny spoke for the first time since Pickering had arrived at the house. ‘I can’t talk with you here, Mum!’

  ‘Now come on, Jenny, you know we’ve never—’

  ‘It really would be better if I could speak to your daughter on her own, Mrs Pitt.’ Pickering looked into the concerned maternal face and tried hard to make use of his youthful appeal. ‘Not many of us find it easy to speak frankly in front of a close relative, you see. Not even when it’s someone so obviously concerned to be helpful as you.’

  ‘But I can’t just leave her to struggle through on her own.’

  ‘You can and you should, Mrs Pitt. Jenny’s an adult. She’s no need to have her mother present when we talk to her. And in any case, this isn’t a formal interview. No one’s suggesting Jenny’s done anything wrong. All we want to do is to get to the bottom of who’s done this to her. When we’ve done that, we can set about putting the person who harmed her behind bars.’

  The older woman had been waiting to protest all through his speech, but the last words brought her up short. If he was trying to put the man her daughter wanted to protect into prison, this likeable young man was on her wavelength all right. She said, ‘All right. I’ll go and make us all a cup of tea, shall I?’

  Thank God for the English addiction, thought Gordon Pickering. ‘That would be very helpful, Mrs Pitt. I’m sure we’d all welcome a cup of tea.’ Always give a parent something to do, or they’ll listen at the door: that was one of Percy Peach’s maxims.

  The girl gave him a glance from her one good eye as soon as the door shut behind her mother. ‘I can�
��t talk. I can’t tell you who did this. I don’t know who did it and I couldn’t tell you if I did.’ The words came in a rush from the mouth which had remained closed for so long.

  Gordon Pickering was three years older than this stricken girl, but he felt suddenly that the age-gap was much wider. He said gently, ‘Let’s just work it through, Jenny. You tell me what you know and I’ll fit it into whatever knowledge we already have. We know more than you’d think about what goes on in Brunton.’

  She looked at him sharply, her fingers stealing up to the bruised cheek beneath the closed eye, her face wincing as she touched it. ‘The cheekbone isn’t broken, you know. I thought it was, at first. I’ll heal up OK, in a few days.’

  ‘Boyfriend, was it?’

  ‘No!’ She looked shocked at the thought.

  Her vulnerability made Pickering more determined to get to the bottom of this. And beneath his compassion, the nerve which made him a CID man had begun to tingle. He was certain now that this was not a domestic, that it was linked to some more serious crime. There was even the faint possibility that it might have some tenuous connection with the Sarah Dunne murder, that he might not be here on a wild goose chase after all. He said, ‘We can be very discreet when discretion is needed, Jenny. No one in Brunton except my boss is even aware that I’m here talking to you. So let’s have the facts about this.’

  She looked as if she wanted to speak, then shook her head hopelessly and glanced at the door. ‘I can’t speak to you. I really don’t know who it was who did this. And my mother and dad would kill me, if they knew what I’d been doing in Brunton.’

  Perhaps she didn’t realize it, but her words were almost an invitation to press her further about that secret life. He heard the distant clatter of crockery in the kitchen at the back of the big old house and said quietly, ‘We need to know about that, Miss Pitt. This is a criminal assault.’