‘D’you want me to come with you?’ I had asked.
‘I always enjoy your company.’
‘So what were the findings of the inevitable debriefing with James?’ I persisted mulishly.
‘If you get killed he’s going to say that, as he put it, you were outwith his control.’
‘Look, I’m quite prepared to forget it if my presence is throwing a spanner in the works.’
‘No, it’s not. And if it comes to the crunch, you’re my responsibility.’
Men.
Carrick was having a well-overdue evening off and taking Joanna out for a meal as it was her birthday. The report was in his in-tray and Patrick switched on the desk lamp and sat in the DCI’s revolving chair, swinging gently from side to side as he read.
‘Horsley had been belted over the head with something like an iron bar before his neck was slashed,’ he said. ‘The former probably killed him outright as there was still sufficient blood in his body for testing that revealed he’d been drinking heavily up until the time of death. Hardly any water in the lungs so he was dead when he went in the river. We need to find where he was killed. Someone will have had to do some fairly meaningful clearing up.’ He glanced up. ‘Fancy a trawl round some dodgy Bristol nightlife?’
‘It would mean getting changed into dodgy nightlife clothes or we’ll stick out a mile. I assume you mean to work undercover.’
‘No, I was thinking of going in twenty-four-carat Bill and spreading unending terror.’
I was not so sure of the wisdom of this. ‘Do we know if he was married or had a girlfriend?’
‘Apparently the latter. Kylie Walker. We could go and see her first.’
It was the kind of housing estate where, in the words of my Scottish friend Linda, social workers wipe their feet on the way oot. No visiting car would escape being dismembered as soon as the owner was safely out of sight, alarm systems or no, so we parked in a slightly more salubrious area about a quarter of a mile away and walked back.
People skulked, I knew, just out of the brightest of the ghastly illumination provided by the orange-tinted street lights, by rows of lock-up garages and in doorways. A few youths slouched on a street corner. I had those back-of-the-neck prickles engendered by the certainty that one was being watched, taken stock of, evaluated. I jumped out of my skin when a dog suddenly threw itself at a gate we were passing, baying to get at us, its teeth bared, crazed with a hatred of strangers.
Patrick made for the youths who had started kicking around an empty beer can in desultory fashion. One, seeing our approach, sent it hurtling viciously in our direction at head height. Patrick caught it one-handed and carried on walking, an amiable smile on his face.
‘Can you direct us to Brunel Court?’ he asked the kicker, profferring the can, but not necessarily as a peace offering.
The can was ignored and a severe case of acne pondered on the advisability of replying before visibly deciding that his personal safety could well depend on it. ‘Yeah, over there.’ A jerk of the head. ‘That block, wiv the white van outside.’
Patrick manoeuvred himself subtly so that he could note our destination while keeping a weather eye on the present company. ‘Thanks. Did any of you know Peter Horsley?’
‘’E’s dead.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘You the fuzz?’
‘Yes.’
There was a general edging away.
‘We need to catch his killer,’ Patrick pointed out.
Another, younger, boy piped up. ‘Well, it’s no good comin’ ’ere. The bloke wot topped ’im ain’t one of us. Pete ’ad got ’isself caught up in big-time stuff.’
‘Shuddup!’ snarled the first youth.
‘Well, ’e’s got to know, ’asn’t ’e?’ protested the other. ‘An’ then ’e’ll bugger off an’ leave us alone. Someone told our mum an’ our mum der go, “It’ll be the end of ’im.” Last month, that woz. Mum’s always right,’ he finished triumphantly.
‘Who was the someone?’ Patrick asked.
‘Dunnow. Could’ve been Kylie, his girlfriend.’
‘And you don’t know any of Horsley’s chums?’ Patrick asked.
‘’E didn’t ’ave no chums ’ere,’said the first youth. ‘Bragged of posh bods who called ’im on their mobiles.’ He spat in the gutter. ‘Pathetic git.’
‘Thanks,’ Patrick said again, tossed the can unerringly in a nearby bin and we left them.
‘Our mum der go?’ I echoed under my breath.
‘Said. It’s pure Bristol,’ Patrick revealed. ‘Interesting that Kylie’s name was mentioned.’
Disenchanted youngsters of both sexes were hanging around in the entrance and stairwell of the block of flats, drinking, smoking and generally making a nuisance of themselves. They ignored us and we ascended the stairs to the fourth floor, the lift being out of order even if we had felt like braving its stinking environs.
It was late and we would possibly be getting Ms Walker out of bed, I thought as Patrick rang the doorbell. If she answered the door at all. But footsteps were heard within almost immediately and the door was flung open wide. The disappointed expression on the face of the young woman who had opened it made it no secret that she had been expecting someone else.
‘Yes?’
‘Miss Kylie Walker?’
‘Yes.’
‘Police,’ Patrick said, producing his warrant card. ‘Can we have a quick word with you?’
‘I’ve given my statement.’
‘Follow-up investigations,’ came the impassive reply. ‘May we come in?’
‘Look, can’t it wait until tomorrow? I’ve a friend coming round.’
‘You’ll have to come to Bath nick unless you want to be grilled by the Bristol heavies again.’
She wilted against the edge of the door. ‘Oh, all right, then.’
‘Ten minutes,’ Patrick promised.
In the dim light of the hall I could see that she was very petite, very pretty and had her lower lip pierced with a stud. Leading the way into a living room she gestured resignedly to a settee covered by a leopard-print throw and sat down well away from us on an upright chair near the door.
‘You want to know about Pete and me,’ Kylie said.
‘Not in the sense of being nosy about your relationship,’ Patrick assured her, not seating himself.
‘Oh good,’ she said dully. ‘They did.’
‘I’d like you to tell me as much as you can about his friends, contacts, where he worked when he had a job, things like that.’
‘Well, he didn’t have friends really.’
‘He had you.’
‘Yes, but we’ve known each other for always. His family used to live next door when we were in Seymour Road. I looked after him when he was little.’
‘But surely you’re younger than he was.’
‘Too right. By five years. And I was bigger and taller. But he was always a big baby. He didn’t have no brothers and sisters so I was sort of his sis. Bathed his grazed knees, wiped his bloody nose for him when he fell over.’
‘Ah, so he lived with you because he didn’t have anywhere else to go.’
‘Sometimes. We were an item for a short while when he was younger. I’d left home and got this council flat here. I really thought he was going to make a go of himself then but he started drinking and messing with drugs so I threw him out. Sometimes he’d come back when he wasn’t in prison: no money, nowhere to live, the usual with useless men.’ She flared up. ‘You know, like stinking drains. You think you’ve fixed it but the smell comes back again.’
We were getting the relationship angle after all.
‘But you didn’t really have to put up with him,’ I pointed out.
‘I felt sorry for him, I suppose.’
‘Where did he live when he wasn’t here?’ Patrick asked.
‘At his Mum’s. His Dad’s dead. She’s partly disabled and lives in sheltered accommodation that only has one bedroom so if he go
es there he has to sleep on the living-room floor. She’d got wise to him and wouldn’t give him any more money. Not that the poor soul can afford to, with only her pension to live on.’
‘Did people call round here wanting to talk to him?’
‘I can’t remember anyone. He’d have probably climbed out of the window and shinned down the drainpipe if they had as the only folk likely to come looking for him were those he owed money to.’
‘Did he ever mention a man by the name of Keith Davies?’
‘No, but he was like an oyster was Pete – never told me anything.’
‘Other unpleasant types, then. Did he ever work for a criminal gang?’
‘I can’t tell you about that. There were a few iffy ones he said he knew but I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. He was the kind of fool who thought he could impress people by talking like that. I’m not naming names anyway. I don’t want to end up in the river too. And there’s probably nothing in it.’
‘Someone murdered him,’ I said. ‘Have you any idea why they would? Murder’s not just empty talk.’
‘Well, he must’ve bitten off more than he could chew, mustn’t he? Or really got up some big Godfather’s nose.’
I thought Patrick might press her further on this but he said, ‘He did have a few proper jobs, though. Do you know what they were?’
Kylie shrugged. ‘One or two. He didn’t talk about it in case I asked him for some of the money back he’d had off me. I think he worked in the Post Office sorting place one Christmas a year or so back, but don’t take that as gospel.’
‘Someone said something about him bragging about getting calls from people using mobiles. Any idea who they could have been?’
She shook her head. ‘No. And they’d have had to have rung here. Pete didn’t have one.’
‘While you were out at work?’ I said.
‘It would figure.’
‘Which is where, if you don’t mind my asking?’ Patrick said.
‘At Littlejohn and Makepeace. I’m a secretary there.’
‘The undertakers.’
Kylie smiled. ‘They prefer to be called funeral directors, you know. I remember now. I got Pete a job there as a driver but it didn’t last. He was rude to everyone, even the bereaved. He was a real toad when you think about it.’
Nine
We had made another connection: Littlejohn and Makepeace had arranged Barney Stonelake’s funeral. I nevertheless found it hard to understand how someone who worked merely as a driver for a funeral director could somehow ‘lose’ a corpse and substitute valuable items in the coffin with a view to hiding them efficiently until they could be disposed of, for financial gain, without anyone else in the company knowing anything about it.
Patrick and I considered postponing the second phase of our night’s work, wondering if it might prove to be more worthwhile first to interview Mr Littlejohn and his partner. We already had an appointment with them the following morning. (They were, we had learned, personal friends of John and Elspeth, which was unlikely to make it any easier.) But we were on site, so to speak, and, more to the point, my other half was gasping for a pint. We went to a pub near the old docks, which have been extensively redeveloped and improved, the old warehouses now boutiques and restaurants with apartments above. According to Carrick, the Barge hardly ever closed, a state of affairs that was only tolerated by the constabulary because the landlord was a mine of useful information concerning the local riff-raff. He was also prepared to arrange delectable bacon sandwiches to be made, gratis, for those officers of the law who happened to be passing in the wee small hours, a useful arrangement for all concerned. It seemed that Patrick would not need to practise his role of lean, mean, policing machine after all, not tonight anyway. He must have thought so too and, unwisely and uncharacteristically as it turned out, dropped his guard.
It was late by now, even by normal closing-time standards, but the pub, scruffy and old-fashioned in comparison with the newly transformed neighbourhood, was heaving with people. We plunged within and finished up when we had bought our drinks crammed together into a tiny niche at one end of the bar.
‘Just as well we’re married,’ Patrick said, giving me a manic kind of grin and having to raise his voice over the racket. ‘It’s no good, we’ll have to take it in turns to swig. You first.’
He was not entirely joking, it really was that snug, and I gratefully drank some of my iced orange juice and lemonade. It was the kind of place where the white wine would be out of a box stored lovingly on a radiator, and anyway, I would probably end up driving. By the time Patrick was on his second pint people were beginning to leave, probably to go clubbing, and we found ourselves with more space.
The bar having thinned out and any conversation less likely to be overheard Patrick caught the attention of the barman, an individual of generous proportions who slotted seamlessly into his surroundings as he had a black beard and eyepatch. I wondered if both were props but they looked genuine enough.
‘DCI Carrick recommended this place,’ Patrick said quietly by way of introduction when the man had berthed opposite us, ‘on account of the excellent beer and communication. Would the latter be from your good self?’
‘Would you be working for him?’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’
‘Do you have any ID? You can’t be too careful these days.’
Patrick showed his warrant card, with discretion, and then said, ‘We’re wondering if the man whose body was found in the Avon at Bath was a customer of yours.’
‘The Horsley bloke?’ For such a big man he had a very soft voice.
‘Yes, him.’
‘I can’t say that I ever saw him here. In fact I didn’t recognize him at all from the picture in the paper. But the name rang a bell when I saw the article. He was a bad lad, wasn’t he?’
‘A complete shit by all accounts,’ Patrick replied crisply.
‘Bad lads don’t tend to show their faces in here because they know I run a tidy pub. But his name was possibly mentioned, if you get my meaning. Excuse me for a minute.’ After attending to a another customer he returned to say, ‘I have an idea it was in connection with someone stealing money from his old mum.’
‘You mean, he did?’
There was a slow nod.
‘Surely though feelings wouldn’t have run so high among your normally law-abiding regulars that they’d beat him over head with an iron bar, almost slice it off and then chuck him in the river somewhere upstream of Bath.’
Breath was drawn in graphically through a fine set of teeth. ‘That vicious, eh? No, perhaps not.’
‘Who would, then? Had he got himself into some kind of trouble with the big boys?’
‘Nah, he was probably too stupid to have worked for people like that. Yes, I know you’re going to say they employ bruisers to do the dirty work but even bruisers have to be streetwise. Horsley was just a provincial thicko. That’s just my opinion, of course.’
‘Of course. We’re also investigating three murders and the theft of a coffin from a village churchyard near Bath, crimes which would appear to be connected. You might well have heard about it all. A body had never been in the coffin and the funeral was arranged by the company Horsley worked for for a short while. We have yet to check whether the times coincide.’
‘So where’s the body?’
Patrick shrugged. ‘I doubt whether anyone would do something as silly as bury it in their own back yard. Somewhere out in the sticks, no doubt. Is there anyone you’re aware of who would be likely to know more about Horsley?’
After pondering the man said, ‘No, sorry, I don’t. I’m really guessing but reckon he wasn’t part of any particular scene around here, more of a loner.’
‘How about a man called Keith Davies?’
‘He’s dead too, isn’t he?’
‘That’s right – one of the murder victims.’
‘Carrick came over to sound me out about him just after it happen
ed. I didn’t know the bloke. He didn’t drink here – as far as I’m aware. But then again, he didn’t live round here, did he? Someone said that he had his roots in London. You’d need to trawl round a few sewers there.’
‘There’s a big bossman in there somewhere,’ Patrick continued. ‘And something sufficiently valuable to make it worth while killing four people.’
‘Well, there’s nothing on the grapevine round here about it. I wish you luck.’ And with that our informant went back to work.
‘There was nothing really useful there,’ I commented.
‘No, but we must look at it from the point of view of raising the police profile. I intend to go into Davies’s records and try to find out where his old haunts in London were with a view to paying a visit. But obviously it depends what turns up. That reminds me, we must polish up your self-defence skills, can’t have you getting hurt if we do head for scumbag places.’ I was feeling all warm and soppy about his concern for my safety when he absent-mindedly added, ‘James’d skin me alive.’
We left, Patrick calling in at the gents on the way while I walked slowly to the car park, which was at the front. When he did not return after a suitable interval I wondered about tummy wobbles, gave him another couple of minutes and then went back to check.
From where we had been standing the gents’ was approached through an archway into another bar and then out through a door that led to the exterior and rear of the building. I checked the entire interior of the pub to see if he had paused to speak to someone else but there was no sign of him. Heart thudding by now, I ran back to the door through which he had disappeared and followed my nose. It was incredibly dark outside: surely a lamp, or lamps, had failed. Then I heard unmistakable sounds coming from within a dimly lit entrance.
I assimilated the fact that every light bulb but one had been smashed in the stinking interior and that it was at least six against one, grabbed the man nearest to me, a comparative lightweight, swung him round and his head came into violent contact with a hand-drier. I was vaguely aware of him off balance, falling over his own feet and taking a header into one of the cubicles but had already got hold of someone else, by the hair: I can get really carried away by this sort of thing. He yelped, tried to twist round so I released him and chopped him across the throat. He subsided, choking.
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