Shooting Elvis

by Stuart Pawson

  ‘Give me your hands,’ he said, and she reached across the table towards his outstretched ones. He took hers and held them, gently.

  ‘I remember your accident,’ he told her. ‘Your not going to the Olympics was a disappointment for all of us. We shared it with you. Look at me.’

  Sonia looked at him.

  ‘What do you see?’

  She hesitated, then said, ‘I see a very kind man. And a wise one.’

  He smiled, big teeth flashing in his dark face. ‘I can be really mean at times, my wife tells me. And foolish, too. But if there is one thing I know about, it’s disappointment. It takes time, but you have to move on from it. Do the work, Miss Thornton, and I’ll listen out for The Gazelle on the sports channel.’

  It’s an old army trick, spitting on your shoes when you polish them. Spit and polish, that’s what they call it. At first it dulls whatever shine you’ve achieved, but then, as you buff the leather, it begins to reflect its surroundings back at you with increased intensity, taking on their colours until the blackness is defined by its absence. Newton declared that the colour black was caused by the total absorption of light, but he never considered an old soldier’s boots. Or maybe he chose to ignore this contradiction to his theory. The man gave the shoe a final rub with the yellow duster, held it up for inspection for a moment and placed it on the floor tiles, next to its glowing partner. He pulled on his leather slippers, looked at his watch, and went into the parlour, where the television stood.

  He’d listened to local radio throughout the day, when he had the opportunity, but there had been nothing about the strange and untimely death of Alfred Armitage, just the usual gossip about sport. TV news was, hopefully, more comprehensive. After the montage of activities that the people of the area ceaselessly indulge in – fell running, hot air ballooning, white water canoeing – the familiar, slightly embarrassed, face of Look North came onto the screen. The presenter gave his nervous smile, swung round to the next camera and launched into his script. A woman had been stabbed in Harrogate; a terrier was trapped down a badger sett near Selby; police were hunting a hit-and-run driver in Bradford. No old men had been found electrocuted.

  The man stroked his chin and wondered why the news hadn’t broken. Alfred’s home help came on Monday mornings and should have found the body, which left plenty of time for the story to leak out. Perhaps the police were withholding the news deliberately while they pursued their lines of enquiry. He smiled at that thought. If that was the case, they were wasting time. It was possible, of course, that the home help never arrived – everybody knew how unreliable social services were – and Alfred was still sitting there, undiscovered. He wondered about making a phone call to speed things up, then decided against it. Patience was the word; he’d give it another twenty-four hours. He killed the BBC and switched to a video he’d made of Top Gear.

  Sonia had done the work, spending hours after her shift ended on the cycling machine and all the other contraptions that look as if they were modern-day equivalents of Inquisition instruments of torture, until her knees were strong enough to kick over a JCB. Apparently the exercises were designed to develop her slow-twitch muscle fibres. It’s the fast-twitch ones that bodybuilders are fond of, so Sonia’s legs didn’t change shape, for which I was grateful. We’d done the Three Peaks and I’d had her on the Mosedale round in the Lakes, over Pillar, Scoat Fell and Yewbarrow. The descent from Yewbarrow is a real knee killer. When we arrived back at Wasdale Head our knees were throbbing like cobblers’ thumbs, but the pain came in matched pairs, hers and mine, so that was OK.

  And tonight we were going running for the first time.

  Sonia had checked the casserole in the slow cooker and declared it still edible, and was already changed into her kit when I arrived home.

  ‘It’s just over three miles,’ I told her. ‘At a slow pace. In running circles I’m known as the Mr Toad. We’ll park in the golf club car park and do a circuit through the woods. That’s good fun. Then we’ll skirt the golf course until we come out on Rhododendron Drive, which is a straight blast back to the clubhouse. Tonight you are learning the route, that’s all. Then you’ll be able to come and run it at your own speed, all by yourself. Do you understand?’

  Sonia was tying the lace of her trainer. I put my hand on her head and said, ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘Yessir!’ she exclaimed, standing up. ‘I’ve got to keep my place behind you. Now come on, let’s go.’

  It really is fun, running through the woods. Frankly, it’s rare that you can describe anything about running as fun, but in the woods you are more concerned about keeping upright than travelling fast. The path is narrow, snaking in and out, up and down, between the trees. Fallen branches have to be skipped over, twigs scratch your legs and brambles tug at your clothes. The sunlight slanting down through the branches flickers across your face and if there’s been rain lately, and there usually has, the air smells of leaf mould and wild garlic.

  ‘Log!’ I shouted over my shoulder as I adjusted my stride to step over it.

  ‘Got it!’ Sonia called back to me.

  We burst out of the shadows of the trees onto the rolling fairway of the golf course and she moved alongside me. The sun was low, casting long shadows, and three golfers making their way towards the next hole gave us a wave.

  I tried to glance at her without moving my head, so she couldn’t see that I was watching her. Sonia’s style of running is unusual. Her head pecks back and forward with each stride, like a chicken, as if she’s urging herself on. She holds her hands in front of her rather than by her sides, and lifts her knees higher than necessary. Sonia Thornton doesn’t run puffing and blowing, head rolling, face contorted with effort. She prances, like a fancy pony in an equestrian show.

  ‘Are you allowed to tell me all about the suspicious death?’ she asked, as casually as if we were sitting down for our evening meal.

  ‘It’s…an old man,’ I replied, between breaths.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It looks…as if he…electrocuted…himself.’

  ‘Poor man. So why is it suspicious?’

  ‘Do you…mind if I…tell you…about it…later?’ I gasped.

  We dropped off the grass onto Rhododendron Drive. This is about half a mile long, the first bit slightly downhill before it levels out and becomes a climb. We speeded up slightly on the firmer ground, my big feet going slap-slap-slap as they pounded the surface, her smaller ones making a soft tch-tch-tch as they skimmed over it. I was feeling tired now, the chest hurting and the legs wobbly. As the slope turned against me Sonia edged away and the gap between us widened. I thought of an elegant yacht leaving the quayside, and I was the hapless fool who had cast her loose, left behind on dry land.

  I was over a hundred yards behind when she reached the car. There were about six vehicles parked near the clubhouse and another four at the other side, near the trees. Three of these belonged to dog walkers and the other was mine. I padded up to it and rested my head on my folded arms on the car roof, sucking in air like a black hole. After a few seconds her arm fell across my shoulders and I turned to her, our faces barely an inch apart. Perspiration was glistening on the side of her nose and she smelled of perfume and something else. Something that I thought I liked.

  ‘Are you OK, love?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I managed to mumble. ‘I’m OK. I’m very OK.’

  After we’d showered and eaten I cut the orange wire into four equal lengths and bared the conductors on one of them, just like I’d seen earlier in the day. I asked Sonia to sit in an easy chair and gave her the ends of the wire.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘The cat has choked to death after eating the goldfish, the milkman has left you semi-skimmed instead of full cream and that new dress you’d ordered from Grattan’s catalogue for the company Christmas party is the wrong colour, so you’ve decided to end it all. By electrocution. I want you to wrap the wires around your thumbs, nice and tight, please.’

 
; She took hold of the cable. ‘Like this?’

  ‘Um, no. The copper bit. Round the thumb first, then twist it. And we’ll do it like he did, for the sake of accuracy: put the blue around your right and the brown around your left. That’s the way.’

  Sonia held her hands up. ‘Are you going to turn me on?’

  ‘Ah! Any other time, yes, but tonight your luck has changed. Your last payment to the electricity people was lost in the post and they’ve cut off your supply. You live to fight another day. Let me just make a sketch of the way you’ve done it.’

  I noted the way she’d wrapped the wire around each thumb and then the direction she’d twisted it to make it secure.

  ‘Can I take it off now?’ she asked as I closed my notebook.

  ‘Yes, thank you. That was a big help.’

  ‘Did I do it the same as him?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Oh. So what does that prove?’

  ‘It proves that Sonia Thornton is unique, but I already knew that.’ I placed my hand on the back of her neck, letting her short hair run through my fingers, and moved my face closer to hers. ‘What did you think of the run?’ I asked.

  She smiled at me, resting her forehead against mine, and something churned in my stomach. Sonia smiles like a spring morning, when the daffodils are in full bloom, and when it’s just for me I wonder what I’ve done to deserve such riches. ‘It was good,’ she said. ‘I felt…I don’t know, I haven’t the vocabulary, but running does something to me. I feel as if I’m flying, as if I could take off and soar. Thanks, Charlie. I’d forgotten the joy of it, but tonight I felt it again. You made it possible, brought it back to me.’

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ I whispered. ‘I think we should have an early…’ But by then the room was falling end over end, and I never got to tell her what we should have an early one of.

  Alfred Armitage was a bit of a nuisance, I learned next morning when we gathered in the classroom at the nick. His wife had died in 1997, less than a year after he retired, and since then he’d turned to alcohol for solace and gone into a slow decline. Four landlords in the vicinity of his home told how he would come into their pubs early in the evening and slowly get drunk. Then he’d start berating customers about anything that he’d read in the papers – asylum seekers, lenient penalties for murderers, hospital waiting lists – all the usual right-wing scare-mongering that the tabloids indulge in. Most of the customers agreed with him, the landlords said, but they came out of the house to get away from it, not have it rammed down their throats night after night. Two of them had asked him to either moderate his opinions or find somewhere else to drink.

  ‘So had he enemies?’ I asked.

  Apparently not. He was regarded as harmless, they assured me, and some of his drinking companions took delight in winding him up. He was good for a laugh, at his own expense.

  ‘Do we know a cause of death, yet, boss?’ somebody wondered.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Sorry, haven’t you got it? The PM results say he died of heart failure, probably caused by electric shock. He was discovered at ten-thirty yesterday morning and had been dead for ten to fifteen hours, so the time of death was sometime between seven-thirty and half-past midnight. What did the door-to-doors find?’

  ‘Not much, boss. He was well liked when his wife was alive but he’d driven most of their friends away. One or two seem ripe for a good gossip about him once they get over the shock, so we’ll call on them again when we’ve finished here.’

  ‘That’s the way. And let’s see if we can find someone from Ellis and Newbold’s who knew him. Right, now I want four volunteers. You four will do.’ I pointed to four DCs on the front row. ‘And you can help with this,’ I said, looking at Dave Sparkington.

  I pulled the four lengths of orange cable out of my briefcase and handed one to each of the DCs. The wires were already bared for them. ‘Here’s what I want you to do.’

  Five minutes later they were sitting there like the Three Wise Monkeys, plus a friend, with their thumbs wired together. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s see if we can find a winner. You keep the score, Dave.’ I examined the wires on the first DC’s hands. ‘Number one,’ I announced. ‘Left hand, over the thumb, twisted clockwise. Right hand, over the thumb…’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Dave protested. ‘Did you say clockwise?’

  I was holding a new stick of chalk. I broke it in two and offered him half. ‘Do it on the board,’ I told him. ‘Make a chart. You know what we’re looking for.’

  When he was ready we started again. ‘Left hand, over the thumb, clockwise.’

  Dave wrote it on the board. When he’d finished I said, ‘Right hand, over the thumb, anti-clockwise. Number two. Left hand, under the thumb, clockwise. Right hand…’

  When it was done we all looked at the chart for several minutes, not sure if it made any sense. No fingerprints were found on the cable or the timer, so we had to assess whatever we could.

  ‘What does it show?’ I asked.

  Jeff Caton raised a finger.

  ‘Go on, Jeff,’ I invited.

  ‘Well, two of them put the wire over their thumbs and two of them put it under, which is not a big help. But they all twisted the wires similarly: clockwise on the left thumb; anti-clockwise on the right.’

  Jeff had seen the report we’d done of our first findings, knew what I was getting at, but the Wise Monkeys hadn’t.

  ‘How was it done on the body?’ one of them asked.

  I thought about it, long and hard. Everything pointed at a suicide. There was nothing to suggest that he’d been murdered. He hadn’t been robbed; it would be a particularly sadistic way to kill someone; he didn’t fit any profile of murder victims.

  Except… How many times had I said that?

  ‘On the body,’ I began, ‘both wires were twisted the same way. Clockwise. So where does that leave us?’

  ‘Clockwise is the way all the wires were twisted by the right hand,’ Jeff informed us. ‘I presume our volunteers are all right-handed.’ They nodded and mumbled their agreement. ‘So it looks as if each wire on the body was fixed by a right hand.’

  ‘Which means what?’

  ‘He was ambidextrous,’ someone suggested.

  ‘There’s always a clever sod,’ I responded, flicking my piece of chalk at the offender.

  ‘Which means he had some assistance,’ Jeff said.

  ‘Exactly. In other words, boys and girls, this is looking like a murder enquiry. So let’s go to it.’

  ‘Can we take these off now?’ one of the monkeys asked, proffering his hands.

  ‘Not yet,’ I told him. ‘For the next part of the experiment I need one of you to volunteer to be plugged in…’

  The man with shiny shoes washed his hands after buffing the shoes to a brilliant glow and went upstairs, to the spare bedroom-cum-office where he kept his mementos. His patience had been rewarded. Tuesday morning Radio Leeds had reported the death of an unnamed man by electrocution in Heckley and it made the local TV news in the evening. Wednesday, the Heckley Gazette made it their front-page feature and a couple of tabloids gave it a mention. The man with shiny shoes bought all the papers and read them as eagerly as a wannabee pop star.

  He reached up to a shelf above his desk and lifted a scrapbook off a pile of similar volumes. He opened the book at the first blank page and placed the carefully prepared newspaper cuttings on it, moving them around until they fitted nicely. As the story had spread to page 2 of the Heckley Gazette he’d had to buy two papers. The nationals had covered the story briefly and flippantly, more for the curiosity value of the modus operandi than for any possible criminal content or feelings for the victim. When he was satisfied with the layout he tacked the flimsy sheets down with a Pritt Stick and then secured them more permanently with Scotch magic tape, running the back of his thumbnail over the tape to make it invisible. The untimely death of Alfred Armitage had now taken its place amongst his collection of newspaper cuttings of murders
and rapes that stretched back over twenty years. Alfred was an impostor, not worthy of appearing alongside such exalted company, but the man with shiny shoes smiled as he closed the book: it was early days, yet.

  He finished his breakfast of Kellogg’s Fruit ’n Fibre, wholewheat toast and marmalade and coffee, and rinsed his plate, bowl, cup, knife and spoon under the hot tap. They could be left to dry naturally. He drove fifteen miles in the early morning traffic to the motorway services and dialled a number that he had written on an old pay-and-display ticket. Just as he thought the answering machine might chime in a breathless male voice said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Have you seen the papers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You owe me £500.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Here’s what you do.’

  When he’d delivered the message he found his car again, did a u-turn at the next junction and drove the fifteen miles back to town, back to work.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Assisted suicide,’ Mr Wood stated, placing a copy of the Heckley Gazette in front of me. ‘That’s what they’re saying it could be, and my money’s on it.’

  ‘I know, Gilbert,’ I replied. ‘We’re considering it, but as he appears to have been in good health and relatively sound of mind, if it was assisted suicide it’s almost as good as murder or unlawful killing. The enquiry is the same.’

  ‘What about contacting the organisations that help with these things?’

  ‘Maggie’s on with it, but they’re hardly likely to hold up their hands. They work outside the law. There’s a professor at Leeds University who’s a founder member of Die-When-You-Like, or whatever they’re called. The Euthanasia Society, that’s it. He wouldn’t disclose if Armitage had been in contact with them, but he said that electrocution was not one of their recommended methods.’

  While Alfred had been on the dissecting table, waiting for his appointment with the pathologist’s bone saw, the undertaker had done some work on his face, strictly under the pathologist’s supervision. He’d replaced the dentures, applied a tasteful touch of Max Factor where necessary and closed the eyes. Our photographer had taken a series of mug shots and I had an envelope full of them on my desk. Sometimes we ask a police artist to do a drawing from them of the victim’s face, for showing to witnesses, and sometimes I do it myself. It’s more respectful than using an actual photo, doesn’t upset any relatives. I’d intended doing a drawing of Alfred, but hadn’t had the time. I pulled a photo from the envelope and studied it.