by J M Gregson
The priest’s glittering eyes had been fixed above their heads. Now they dropped, first to Peach’s impassive face and then to the small square table between them. ‘It is true. I am the worst kind of sinner, the shepherd who abuses the trust of his flock.’
Peach wanted to tell him to drop all this flummery and answer basic questions. But he sensed that there was an illness in this strange man, or at least an oddness that he must indulge, if he was to get through to the truth within a disturbed mind. He said quietly, ‘Miss Burgess had a chiffon scarf around her neck when you accosted her on Monday night. Did you seize the ends of it and draw it tight around her neck?’
‘Is that what the woman says I did?’
‘Answer the question please.’
‘I – I suppose I may have done that. I was agitated. I was trying to convince her that she must see the error of her ways. I was telling her how she was encouraging men to commit mortal sin.’
‘So you seized her scarf and tightened it about her neck.’
‘I probably did, yes, in my agitation. I was anxious to save her soul from Satan. Anxious to save the souls of the men she was leading into evil.’
‘So you were a little careless of her body.’
‘I suppose I may have been. I did not mean to hurt her.’
Peach regarded him steadily, trying to work out exactly what was happening behind those finely cut but now very mobile features. ‘You frightened her badly. She feels that if a car had not come along the street at that moment on Monday night, you might well have done her serious harm; might in fact have tightened that chiffon scarf around her neck until it strangled her.’
Devoy said nothing for several long seconds. Then he said, ‘I was very agitated. Very anxious to convince her of the evil path she was treading. But I don’t think I would have done serious harm to her body.’
It was Peach’s turn to pause now, weighing the man’s words, estimating his sincerity as Devoy made this extraordinary attempt to evaluate his own conduct. Then he said slowly, ‘Let’s come back to last night. You weren’t trying to warn her off then. You were only too anxious to pay her and sample her wares.’
‘Yes. That is my own vice and wickedness. That is why I am finished as a priest.’ There was no self-pity in him, but only the deepest of self-loathing.
‘And when you had finished the sex, what would you have done then?’
‘I don’t know. Remonstrated with her, I suppose. I know that it’s illogical to lie with her and then complain about her conduct, but I think I would have tried again to show her that hers was an evil calling, when I had spent my seed within her.’ He gave a mirthless smile at the contradictions in his conduct.
Peach studied him, waiting to see if he would crack, would venture further into the exposure of this other self who had torn him apart. But Devoy kept his gaze fixed upon the scratched table between them, until eventually Peach said, ‘And what about that other girl, Sarah Dunne? Were you on the streets that night? Were you anxious to avail yourself of that young body? To warn her that she might be the occasion of sin for men like you?’
‘No. I didn’t venture out on that Friday night.’
‘Is there any witness to that?’
A pause, in which he might have been thinking, or might not. He looked blank and defeated, near to collapse. ‘No. No witness. I was in my own room in the presbytery at St Matthew’s.’
Peach said quietly, ‘Sarah Dunne was killed by someone who drew her scarf tight about her neck until it throttled her. That was exactly the method with which you threatened Toyah Burgess on Monday night. Father Devoy, did you kill Sarah Dunne?’
‘No.’
‘We would like you to give us a DNA sample, Father Devoy. It will be compared with samples taken from the body of Sarah Dunne. Do you understand the implications of this?’
‘Yes. I have no objection.’
They thought those would be his last words, but when they indicated that the interview was over, he said, ‘I shall have to give the Bishop all the details of this.’
It seemed as if that was a worse horror for him than all that had gone before.
Twenty-Two
The United Kingdom regards itself as a country where the law generally prevails. Yet for a fortunate few who escape the law, crime is a very profitable business.
An estimated four hundred crime barons in the country control some four hundred and forty million pounds of ill-gotten gains. The top thirty-nine among these are worth around two hundred million pounds. Joe Johnson had recently joined the ranks of this select – and infamous – group.
These men are shrewd enough to diversify their wealth into legal businesses as they become more affluent. The Proceeds of Crime Act of 2002, which did away with the need to tie a criminal’s cash to a particular crime, has made it much easier for the police to seize money derived from criminal activity. Yet these most successful criminals, by developing legal sources of income to go alongside their darker projects, make it very difficult for the police to prove that vast sums of money actually came from criminal activities. A crooked accountant can do wonders with the books of a private company.
Joe Johnson got most of his income from drugs and prostitution and then laundered it through the books of legal but less profitable activities. His clubs and casinos were sometimes seedy, but they were properly licensed and perfectly legal. And they provided the perfect cover for his darker and immensely more profitable enterprises.
Chief Superintendent Tucker might have been pusillanimous in his contention that Johnson had now moved beyond the reach of arrest, but he was stating no more than a commonly held police view about such men. The situation was a shame, but it was a fact. Bloody-minded people like Chief Inspector Peach, who thought they could still imprison such men, were flying in the face of the facts.
Johnson had an Achilles’ heel, however. As he climbed the ranks of crime, he continued to employ most of the hoodlums who had started with him in the days when brawn had been the all-important tool, and he had climbed on the back of the fear he instilled. Some of them were little more than crude ‘heavies’, neither as intelligent nor as quick on their feet as the man who employed them. They were loyal and they were cheap.
But for a man making millions each year from crime, economy is not always the best policy.
Ray Shepherd had been one of Johnson’s later employees, a thin, steely man who knew the way to operate and had his boss’s confidence. But he was a sadist, a man who enjoyed inflicting violence. Even in an organization like Johnson’s, sadism got in the way of objectivity, and made him a liability as an employee. Moreover, like all cowards, Ray Shepherd had been easily scared when he came under threat. Faced with arrest for his assault on young Jenny Pitt, he had lost his nerve in the face of Peach’s mixture of bluff and unflinching hostility. He had given his tormentor the name of Lubbock.
It took a little time to locate the man. He was still employed by Johnson, but he had been working for the last two days as a doorman at a small club in Carlisle: a bouncer, part of the muscle such places needed. Hidden away, in Percy Peach’s view; the DCI had a suspicious mind.
Peach took Brendan Murphy with him and directed the young DC to drive the hundred miles up the M6 ‘like the clappers’. They found Lubbock lying on his bed in his room at his back-street lodgings. They had an interesting conversation about his whereabouts and his actions over the preceding thirteen days.
Deprived of the use of his fists, Lubbock was a pathetic opponent for Peach. They arrested him and deposited him in the local nick, where his miserable body would be safe from the attentions of his employer.
Lubbock was not allowed to phone Joe Johnson. By five o’clock, Peach and Murphy were back in Brunton.
It seemed to Peach appropriate that the last act should be played out in the big house where Johnson had so patronized them six days earlier. He took Lucy Blake with him and arrived unannounced at six thirty on that Thursday evening.
‘Hur
st Leigh’ seemed to loom even larger above them against the night sky. Even the unflappable Peach sounded tense as he spoke their names into the microphone in the gatepost, and Lucy Blake realized for the first time just how much this meant to him.
There was a pause before Johnson’s voice, harsh and distorted, rasped at them through the metal grill. ‘Come back in the morning. I don’t ruin my evenings by talking to pigs.’
‘You will on this occasion. Unless you want the place surrounded by wailing police sirens and the neighbours out to watch the show.’
‘This is harassment.’
‘Maybe. I don’t think a magistrate would see it as that.’
There was no further word through the grill, but the wrought-iron gates eased slowly back to allow them entry. The maid was in a black uniform: Johnson liked the trimmings of opulence. She said, ‘Mr Johnson says he hopes this won’t take long, because it’s most inconvenient. He’s waiting for you in his study.’
‘Thank you. We know the way.’ Peach led the way, walking so fast that Blake had almost to run to keep up with him.
He burst through the heavy oak door without knocking, and found Johnson speaking on the phone. The big man glared at him, then said into the mouthpiece, ‘I can’t talk any more now. I’ll get back to you.’ Then he said to the intruder, ‘Manners as good as ever, Peach. The maid would have brought you up. And she’d have knocked before she came in.’
‘Surprised you don’t employ a butler, with your pretensions.’ Peach looked round at the leather Chesterfield, the long, low table of luxuriant house plants beneath the heavily curtained Georgian window, the alpine prints on either side of the bookcase with its leather-bound, never-opened volumes. He nodded at the one jarring note in this carefully designed good taste, the framed cinema poster of Don Corleone snarling at his Mafia henchmen in The Godfather. ‘Fancy yourself as the head of a criminal dynasty, do you?’
‘I’m not in the mood to waste my time, Peach. Tell me why you’re here, and then get out of my house.’
‘We’re here about the murder of Sarah Dunne on the night of the fourteenth of November.’
‘A death about which I know nothing, as I told you when last we spoke.’
‘You did. You also told us that she had been killed near Alexandra Street, a fact we didn’t even know ourselves at that time.’
The big man smiled. ‘I didn’t kill this Sarah Dunne. I can account for my whereabouts for every minute of that Friday evening. Not that I intend to do so.’
‘Or we to ask you. We don’t believe you killed her yourself. Our contention is that you gave the orders for the girl to be killed, because she was challenging your monopoly of prostitution in the town, and because you wanted to scare anyone else who proposed to follow her example.’
‘That isn’t true, of course. Even if it was, you’d never be able to prove it.’ Johnson sat down on the swivel chair behind the leather-topped desk, leaving them standing in front of it. He eyed Lucy Blake insolently and appreciatively from top to toe, as if considering her as an addition to the ranks of harlotry.
Peach had been prepared for this and more. He was angry, but it was a cold, controlled anger, disciplined by his conviction that he would arrest this man, eventually. He said, ‘Ray Shepherd is already under lock and key. He will be charged with inflicting Actual Bodily Harm on Jenny Pitt.’
Johnson raised his eyebrows a little, narrowed his smile just a fraction. ‘I can’t comment on that, as the incident had nothing to do with me. If convicted, Shepherd will naturally be dismissed from my employment.’
‘Jenny Pitt was warned off by you thirty-six hours before she was assaulted. You told her on Sunday evening that if she intended to practise prostitution in this town she would need your protection.’
‘Really? I don’t expect for a moment that you have any witnesses to support that contention.’
‘Ray Shepherd will no doubt be put away for several years, with his previous record. He will also state in court that he was acting on your orders when he beat up Miss Pitt.’
Johnson allowed himself a snigger. ‘Oh, I doubt that, DCI Peach. I doubt that very much.’
‘When you are facing a murder charge yourself, Joe Johnson, you will find that support and loyalty drop away alarmingly.’
For the first time, real anger flickered across the coarse features above the immaculate suit. His stocky opponent’s certainty was beginning to get to him. Peach noted the reaction and began to play his trumps. ‘You made mistakes when we were here last Friday. One of them was to draw my attention to the News Review section of the Sunday Times and the article there about the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.’
‘I always enjoy factual accounts of police incompetence. That was a full and very good account.’
‘I don’t dispute that. I went to the press files and read it myself. The article reminded me of one of the crucial things which threw the man in charge of the Ripper hunt off the scent. That was a taped message from a man with a north-eastern accent who claimed to be the Ripper. For two years the murder team were attempting to “find the Geordie”, when the Ripper did not come from the north-east at all.’
‘Yes, I remember that. As I say, I’m a bit of a connoisseur of police ineptitude.’
‘So that when we had a phone call from a man with a strong Birmingham accent a day later, I was inclined to treat it with a certain degree of scepticism.’
‘A view not shared by your Chief Superintendent, if I remember what I saw of his press conference on television.’
‘I also thought that I knew where the idea had come from.’ Peach stared hard into the face of a man who was not used to being challenged.
‘I don’t do accents, Peach. That isn’t one of my many talents.’
‘No. As usual, you get other people to do your dirty work. The call was made from a phone booth in Birmingham, and the local accent was genuine. You own a casino within two hundred yards of where that call came from. My belief is that it was made on your orders, when you realized after our visit that we had you in the frame for the Sarah Dunne murder.’
The smile this time was a little forced, but Johnson was perfectly calm as he said, ‘Circumstantial, Peach, highly circumstantial. You’d never make it stick in court.’
‘Perhaps not. But when people are charged with being an accessory to murder, they often become very anxious to explain their conduct. It’s my belief that we’ll find and punish the man who made that phone call, in due course. But we won’t need him to give you a life sentence.’
Peach’s certainty was now visibly affecting Johnson. The skin seemed to tighten a little around his forehead and temples, making the lines of his old scars a little whiter and more noticeable. He rose from his chair as he said, ‘I think I’ve had enough of this. I’ve been patient with your wild theories for quite long enough.’ He leered slowly down the curves of Lucy Blake and said, ‘I’ll be very happy to offer my hospitality to DS Blake, if she likes to stay, but I think it’s time you were on your way, Peach.’
‘You should really have got rid of Lubbock, of course.’ Peach threw the name like a quiet stiletto at his man’s ribs, and watched him sink back into his chair as if he had been physically wounded.
Johnson kept his voice even as he said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I believe I have employed – perhaps still do employ – a man called Lubbock. I have many employees nowadays.’ His attempt to indicate the width of his empire by a wide wave of his arm fell flat because the limb seemed suddenly enfeebled.
‘I suppose you felt that if you looked after him, gave him some sort of employment, you could keep him under scrutiny and ensure his loyalty. So you sent him off the scene as soon as he’d killed Sarah Dunne. He didn’t seem to have enjoyed his week in Morecambe, by the way. Not much to do at the seaside in November, especially for a man as limited as Len Lubbock.’
Joe Johnson had been severely shaken by the very mention of Lubbock’s name. Now, wit
h the implication that Peach had sought him out and interviewed him, his world was beginning to collapse about his ears. ‘If Lubbock did anything to harm this Sarah Dunne, he wasn’t acting on my orders.’
‘Not what he says, Joe. He’s singing like a canary, is Len Lubbock. Old-fashioned heavy, you see. You should have got rid of him a long time ago. He was all right for a bit of old-fashioned violence when you were on the way up, but now he’s landed the two of you with a murder rap. And he scares easily; you should employ a better class of villain, but I’m glad you didn’t. And just in case you’re thinking of stopping his song, he’s safely caged, where you can’t get at him.’
‘He was never ordered to kill the girl.’ For the first time, Johnson spoke in a dull monotone.
They paused, allowing the sense of defeat in his words to take its full effect in the incongruous setting of the silent, opulent room. Peach grinned down into the whitening face of the man in the chair behind the desk. The fact that they had been left standing now seemed to give him physical dominance. ‘We’ll argue that out in court, no doubt. Lubbock has already admitted to strangling Sarah Dunne with her own scarf. I expect we’ll match his DNA with hairs we found on the girl’s body. He’s quite clear that he was acting on your orders.’
He nodded to Lucy Blake, who stepped forward and pronounced the words of arrest. Joe Johnson slouched between two uniformed officers to the patrol car waiting outside.
Lucy Blake was silent in the face of Peach’s elation as they drove back to the station in Brunton. The town was rid of an evil man, but she could still see the dead, seventeen-year-old face of poor, pathetic Sarah Dunne.
