‘I respect your feelings, Charlie. Once a thief-taker, always a thief-taker, eh?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘But you’ll think about it?’
‘Yeah, I’ll think about it.’ If it makes him happy.
‘If we needed someone to face the cameras, anytime, would you do it if asked?’
‘If asked, I’d probably have to do it, wouldn’t I?’
‘Attaboy, Charlie. Attaboy. Thanks for ringing.’
I replaced the receiver, wondering what it was all about. If asked to front an appeal for witnesses to a crime I’d do it because I believed it might produce results. I’d be sitting next to someone who’d been raped, or lost a child, or been badly beaten. I wouldn’t be too bothered if my nose was reflecting the arc lights or if I dropped an occasional aitch. I went home. Fraud squad could wait.
The Oldfield 10K race started at ten a.m. Sunday morning, in front of the town hall. The course was dumbbell shaped and finished back where it started. I drove Sonia there and we arrived about an hour early. She was already wearing her kit, under two tracksuits. I’d suggested that she wear one of her GB vests, but she declined.
‘The people would like to see you in one,’ I argued, ‘and the other competitors would be dead chuffed to compete against you.’
‘I’m not representing GB,’ she protested.
‘But you used to. And the organisers would like it. It would raise the profile of the race.’
‘And I might flop.’
‘You’re too modest.’
‘Perhaps.’
For once she wasn’t talking non-stop. It was nerves. Hers and mine. I didn’t care where she finished, as long as it wasn’t limping along with a damaged knee. The thought was never mentioned between us: as far as we were concerned, the knee problem didn’t exist.
Hundreds of athletes of all standards congregated in front of the town hall, some already stripped down to singlets and shorts even though it was a cool morning. Ages ranged from teenage to much older than me and I briefly wished that I was part of it all, but the feeling didn’t last long. There must have been about a million pounds’ worth of kit on show. Nike and Adidas were the major players, with plenty of Diadora, Reebok and HiTech. Macmillan nurses were on prominent display, with ActionAid and lots of local charities well supported. The serious athletes looked grim and jogged back and forth as the big hand on the town hall clock edged towards the vertical. One or two shook hands as they acknowledged a rival. Sonia did her stretching exercises and bounced up and down, keeping loose. She rotated her shoulders and then her neck muscles: six times clockwise and then six times widdershins. For races of this length you didn’t warm up – you’d be warm enough after a kilometre or so. Nobody recognised her.
‘Five minutes, love,’ I said.
She nodded and began to peel off the layers until she was down to running vest and shorts. Some of the women wore what looked like bikini bottoms, but Sonia preferred the more traditional style. I stuffed her tracksuits into a bin liner and swung it over my shoulder.
‘Laces tight?’ I asked, and she squatted down to check them.
Runners were making their way to the start line. The women started at ten o’clock, with the men fifteen minutes later. There were a lot of them, and it was important to be on the front row. I gave her a kiss on the cheek, told her to kill them all, told her that she was the Gazelle, and watched her push her way to the front, her head visible above almost all the others as she muscled her way through. I smiled to myself – she’d switched into competitor mode.
‘Hello, Charlie, you OK?’ I should have known the force would be well represented. Halifax had entered a whole team and they’d found me.
‘Yeah,’ I said, blinking and shielding my eyes. The morning sun was making them sting. ‘I’d have brought my kit if I’d known you lot were entering.’
The gun sounded and the women were sent on their way. I watched a choppy sea of heads randomly bobbing up and down as they slowly moved off, and in seconds they were gone and the men were moving forward to fill the space they’d left. I thought I saw Sonia, near the front, but I couldn’t be sure.
‘Good luck, chaps,’ I told the team, and started to follow a gaggle of spectators across the course to a vantage point at the halfway mark. That’s when I remembered that I hadn’t clicked the stopwatch.
I was in big trouble. I looked up at the town hall clock, waited until the hand hesitantly moved over the minute mark and started the watch. Phew! If I added a minute to her time – providing I remembered to stop the watch – that would be near enough.
Oldfield is an old cotton town, now cleaned up, bypassed and redeveloped like all the others. Once per year the centre is closed for the race and the whole town turns out to watch. It started as a half marathon during the first burst of enthusiasm for jogging, back in the Eighties, and is one of the few that have survived, albeit over the more sensible distance of ten kilometres. Ten K is just over six miles. It’s a hilly course, one of the toughest, and fast times are not expected. I found a vantage point just as the gun sounded for the start of the men’s race.
Five minutes later a ripple of applause could be heard as the runners approached. It gradually grew louder and we craned our necks to see who would be first to loom into view. It was a black girl, all on her own apart from two motorcycle outriders, wearing the vest and green shorts that I believed were Kenya’s national strip. There was something moving about seeing this little figure powering her way along, escorted by the two big riders on their BMWs. There was at least one class runner in the race poor Sonia had decided to make her comeback in.
I started counting as a group came round the bend. At seven there was another gap, and then – I couldn’t believe my eyes – it was Sonia. Her style was unmistakeable, completely different to all the others, high and courtly, as if she were an Egyptian princess surrounded by commoners.
The other spectators recognised it, too, and the applause intensified as she passed. Her fists were clenched and her cheeks flushed with exertion as she dipped her head and pushed forward to try to close the gap.
‘C’mon Gazelle!’ I yelled, and everybody turned to look at me.
As soon as she’d gone I nipped back to the town hall. Workmen were erecting a funnel of railings and stretching a ribbon across the finishing line. The clock read ten twenty-eight and the crowd was growing as spectators and helpers found their way back and waited for their charges. I found a spot ten yards after the finish and felt for the stopwatch in my pocket.
We had a good long view of the finishing straight and the sun was shining. It was a superb day for a race and if Sonia held her position, and I was sure she would, she’d be delighted.
That’s what I thought, but I didn’t know much about her determination. The motorcycle outriders came into view and we all craned to spot the leader. Applause like distant gunfire came and went on the breeze and I stood on tiptoe.
There were two of them, side by side. One small and dark, wearing red and green and driving forward; the other tall and elegant, apparently skimming across the ground like a hovercraft. The tall girl pulled ahead and, fifty yards from the finish, the black girl threw her head back in a gesture that said she was beaten. Seven seconds later Sonia broke the tape.
The man with shiny shoes waited impatiently until the girl in the booth had told her friend on the other end all about the latest boyfriend. He supported Man U, drove a Ford Fiesta with wide wheels and liked to do things to her that would have stretched the ingenuity of a submariner on shore leave in Saigon. Of course, the man with shiny shoes didn’t hear any of this, and wouldn’t have waited with any more patience if he had.
Eventually, when she was content that her friend had reached a certain stage of sexual arousal and she herself had run out of coins, she hung up and left.
‘Buy a mobile!’ the man with shiny shoes exhorted as he watched her bulging backside waddle away, not realising that she had one but had never understoo
d the need to recharge the battery. He climbed out of the car and entered the booth. The receiver was soaked with the girl’s perspiration and he flinched with distaste as he wiped it on a tissue before putting it to his ear. The phone he called was picked up after the third ring.
‘Oh, good morning. I apologise for disturbing you but I’ve something I’d like to discuss with you.’
‘I’m sorry, who are you?’ the woman who answered the phone replied.
‘My name is Smith, Martin Smith,’ he told her, ‘and I’m a probation officer. I’ve been dealing with several of what we refer to as cold cases, and the one concerning your late parents has been brought to my atttention. If it’s not too distressing I’d like to talk to you about it.’
‘My parents, did you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re both dead.’
‘I know. That’s what I want to talk about.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘Six years. That’s not very long when you are talking about life and death.’
‘I don’t suppose so. How can I help you?’
‘Well, I hope it’s me that can help you. We’re having a new initiative in the probation service, talking to relatives of victims of murders and similar serious offences. At long last the government has realised that victims and their relatives should have an active part in the justice system. The courts are far too heavily loaded in favour of the offender.’
‘Yes, I would agree with that.’
‘Your parents were young at heart and quite active, I believe.’
‘Yes. They led a full life.’
‘Which was snatched away from them by a tearaway in an uninsured vehicle he wasn’t qualified to drive.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘What did you feel about the sentence he received?’
‘I thought it was derisory.’
‘He laughed as he left the court.’
‘I read that in the paper.’
‘Did you know that he hasn’t changed his ways? That he has had a string of convictions since then, all to do with vehicles? Did you know that he’s been involved in another fatal accident but he’s still free to roam the streets and put other lives at risk? How does that make you feel?’
‘I…I don’t know.’
‘You’d like him to be put away for a long time, wouldn’t you?’
‘I…I suppose so.’
‘That’s too good for the likes of him. Three good meals a day, a colour TV, DVD; you name it, they’d give it to him. Jail’s too good for vermin like him.’
‘Well…’ She tried to interrupt him, ask who he was again, but the man with shiny shoes was well into his spiel.
‘I’ve been less than honest with you,’ he confessed. ‘I’m not with the probation service. I’m like you: I lost a loved one to this scumbag. A little girl, six years old.’ What is it about six-year-old girls that tug at the heartstrings, he wondered? ‘She was the apple of my eye, and her mother’s, until this…bastard took her from us.’
‘I’m sorry…’
‘And what did the court give him? A slap on the wrist again, that’s what. “She ran out in front of me”, he said. “I had no chance to avoid her”, and the court believed him. They weren’t told of his previous record.’
‘I don’t know what to say…’
‘Hanging’s too good for people like him. I’m going to put a stop to him, once and for all. Would you like to help me?’
‘Help you?’ The woman’s voice was shrill with alarm.
‘Yes. Not physically. I can handle that. Just, you know, encouragement. Tell me that you support what I’m doing. I know we’ll both feel better when it’s done. It’ll be closure on a sad episode in our lives. We’ll be able to move on.’
‘I have moved on.’ She wanted to slam the phone down, was convinced that she was talking to a madman, a nutcase, but she couldn’t.
‘I lost my job,’ he went on, ignoring her comment. ‘Times are hard, and I’ll incur some expenses. I already have done, but I know where he lives. When it’s over, you might feel that you’d want to help me a little, cover my expenses. Just a couple of hundred, something like that, as a gesture of goodwill.’
‘When it’s over? When what’s over? What exactly do you have in mind?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Are you talking about killing him? About murder?’
‘I prefer to think of it as execution.’
‘You need help. Whoever you are, you need help. I don’t know where you’ll get it, but you should talk to someone.’
‘I’m talking to you.’ He could sense that he was losing her. ‘Please help me. Avenging my daughter is the only way out for me. I’ve spoken to therapists and analysts until I’m blue in the face. I thought you at least would understand how I feel.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, firmly. ‘I’m terribly sorry about your daughter, but what you are suggesting won’t help. I’m putting the phone down, now, and I recommend that you have a word with your GP.’ The line went dead.
‘Fuck!’ he hissed, and kicked the wall at the foot of the booth with his immaculately polished brogue. ‘Fuck!’ He kicked again, but it didn’t help.
First thing Monday morning I rang our press officer. ‘It’s Charlie Priest,’ I told him. ‘I have a little story for you.’ He expected a juicy murder, but I told him all about La Gazelle and her triumphant comeback. He promised to do what he could.
I watched the troops drift in, some carrying their jackets, others with tabloids tucked under their arms and sandwich boxes in their hands. Cups of coffee were brewed and distributed. A new week was starting. When they were all present I joined them.
‘Listen up,’ I shouted above the hubbub. ‘Put your comics away and be quiet. First of all, a message from Mr Wood. He has a few tickets left for the Rotary spring ball this weekend and would like to see as many of you there as possible.’
‘How much?’ someone asked.
‘A mere twenty pounds,’ I told him, ‘including finger buffet.’
‘For two?’
‘Each.’
‘Grrr! No chance.’
‘Don’t say you weren’t invited. And now for something else. There’s been a great deal in the papers and on the radio lately about the decline of standards in written English, particularly in the overuse of clichés, and I’m glad to see that some of you have taken this on board when writing your reports. It is highly commendable. However, I would like to make an observation.’
‘You mean – you read them?’ someone asked, incredulous.
‘Oh, yes, I read them all. As I was saying, I’d like to make a couple of observations.’
‘You said an observation, boss.’
‘Shut up and listen. As I have said before, reports catch crooks. What do reports do?’
‘Catch crooks,’ they mumbled in reply. Sometimes I can wrap them round my little finger.
‘However,’ I continued, ‘it should be noted that your reports are legal documents, heaven help us, and can be used in a court of law as evidence. It follows that the language used should be clear and to the point. In these cases, colourful language or an original turn of phrase is not necessary. Courts like clichés. They know where they stand with all the usual clichés.’ I sought a face amongst the ones turned towards me. ‘Robert,’ I said. ‘You are an offender. The youth who didn’t pay at the Texaco station could have been described as driving off at high speed, not “He left like shit off a shovel”.’
‘Sorry, boss.’
‘That’s OK. And you, Gerry. When you described the woman who walked out of the mini-mart with the bottle of whisky under her coat, it would have been perfectly appropriate to describe her as having sharp features, not “a face like a bag of spanners”.’
‘Sorry, boss. It won’t happen again.’
‘I should think not. That’s it for now. Let’s split into our two teams.’
As I led the murder team down the stai
rs to the incident room Sparky loomed up alongside me. ‘How did the race go?’ he asked.
‘She won,’ I replied.
‘She won? Gazelle? That’s brilliant! Brilliant! Did you think she was in with a chance?’
‘Not really. I thought she’d do well, but not win. I was chuffed to bits.’
‘I bet you were. Tell her congrats from me, please.’
‘I can’t tempt you with the spring ball?’
‘Sorry, Chas. We’ll let you represent the department. You do it so well.’
I studied the pictures on the walls, the charts and the lists of names. Nothing had changed since Saturday morning. ‘Has anyone anything to report in the hunt for the killer of Alfred Armitage?’ I asked, when they were all congregated.
Nobody had.
‘No great breakthroughs? No burning lines of enquiry that have opened up?’
Head shakes all round.
‘The trail is going cold,’ I told them. ‘Another week and questions will be asked. I spoke to Mrs Newbold last Friday and came away convinced that Alfred and Eric Smallwood were stealing from Ellis and Newbold’s. Whether it was both of them or just one, I don’t know. Fraud squad aren’t interested. One of the suspects is dead, Mrs Newbold hasn’t made a complaint, and pursuing Smallwood would be unlikely to produce a result and therefore not in the public’s interest, so that’s the end of that avenue.’
‘It was a long shot, right from the start,’ John Rose declared.
‘You’re right, John,’ I agreed, ‘but it had to be followed. It’s looking like Alf was murdered by one of the great unwashed, so, unless he kills again, our chances of finding him are about as good as Brendan’s chances of pulling Julia Roberts.’
Brendan, one of my younger DCs, blushed. He keeps a photo of Ms Roberts behind his locker door.
‘If it is one of the great unwashed, we could be in trouble,’ John said. ‘I’m thinking Dennis Neilson. He befriended and killed lonely, gay men. It’d be more convenient for Smallwood to have done it.’
Shooting Elvis Page 8
