Shooting Elvis

by Stuart Pawson

  Brian Bousfield lived near a village about twelve miles east of Lincoln, in what I would call a mobile home and an estate agent would refer to as a park home. They are like wooden chalets as seen in the Alps, and their only mobility is when they are initially installed. After that the pair of dinky-sized wheels are redundant, so I reluctantly agreed that park home was a better description. Bousfield’s only form was for drunk and disorderly and handling stolen goods, namely half a ton of roofing lead intended for the village church after ten years of fundraising by the dwindling congregation. That’s virtually a clean sheet in my book. He wasn’t in the phone book, so we were cold-calling.

  ‘Like ’em?’ Dave asked as we turned off the lane and passed through a gate into what an ornate sign told us was Wolds View Park. I’d torn myself away from my brick-and-mortar home ridiculously early and diced with the businessmen and reps in the fast lane of the M1 so I could snatch a quick coffee and toast with Dave before the day’s work started.

  We were in an estate of the wooden houses, linked by narrow Tarmac paths just wide enough for one vehicle. Almost every house had a car parked alongside it but there was no sign that any children lived here. No bikes left out overnight, no football lying in the grass, no basketball net. Little borders had been cultivated around most of the homes, and were alive with coloured flowers that I didn’t know the names of, and roses growing up trellising, which I did. You can learn a lot about people by studying the cars they drive. We saw elderly Volvos and newer Daewoos and Skodas, all clean and shiny. These people were careful with their money and had bypassed the daily rat race that most of us compete in, whether we believe it or not. The sun was shining, it was eight-thirty in the morning and there was a dreamy feel to the place.

  ‘It’s a different world,’ I said. ‘An alternative society. Where do they keep all their old lawnmowers and stepladders and stuff?’

  ‘Go left,’ Dave told me. ‘They don’t. You have to be ruthless, living in one of these. That’s it, number eight.’

  There was no strip of cultivation round this one, but it was tidy. No doubt there were rules about keeping the grass short and not allowing rubbish to gather. The curtains were closed and a ten-year-old BMW, sans tax disc, stood in the shadow of the chalet, three house bricks supporting the front nearside brake disc. A slightly newer Rover 75 was at the sunny side.

  ‘It looks as if our man isn’t an early riser,’ Dave said as I parked nose-to-nose with the Bee Emm.

  There were two steps up to his door. I reached forward without mounting them and tapped quietly, not wanting to wake the rest of the community. The third time I tapped much harder and we heard stirrings from inside.

  The curtain behind the window in the door was snatched to one side and we had our first view of Mr Bousfield. I was grateful he hadn’t made a death threat against me.

  ‘Handsome chap,’ Dave mumbled out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘What do you want?’ Bousfield demanded.

  I held my warrant card against the glass without saying anything. He knew the score and opened the door.

  ‘What’s it about?’ he asked.

  ‘A word,’ I told him. ‘Either in the comfort of your home or at Lincoln nick.’

  He was wearing a singlet that showed off his biceps and tattoos, and Adidas shell suit bottoms. Probably the clothes he’d slept in. At any given point in time more men are wearing Adidas bottoms than any other garment available. Adidas bottoms are the chicken tikka masala of haute couture. ‘You’d better come in then,’ he said.

  That’s when I learned what the tenants, or this tenant, did with their surplus belongings: they let them pile up. We were admitted into a corridor bounded by mountains of cardboard boxes, bulging bin liners and assorted items whose shapes didn’t lend them to being contained. I had a vague impression of an exercise machine and a motorcycle frame as we edged our way through the kitchen area into the living space. A sleeping bag, flung open like a peeled banana, told us that this doubled as his bedroom. A television bracketed on the wall was showing a cartoon. Bousfield picked up the remote and killed the picture. He bundled the sleeping bag and told us to take a seat.

  ‘Is it about the car?’ he asked.

  I was trying to identify the smells, to separate the cocktail into recognisable components. Body odour was the main carrier, with a hint of pot, a good slug of tobacco smoke and something else that burnt the back of my nose. It reminded me of the paint shop at the local garage where I once had a Jaguar resprayed. God, that was a long time ago. Cellulose thinners, something like that.

  ‘No, it’s not about the car,’ Dave told him. ‘We were wondering where you were on the night of Sunday, ninth of May. That’s three Sundays ago.’

  He didn’t have to think about it for long, as he was a man of habits and his habits were modest. They exclusively involved consuming lager in the company of a few like-minded friends. When it came to supplying addresses for them he had difficulties, because most of them were involved with fairgrounds and moved around, but he readily suggested that the pub landlord would confirm his alibi. Sunday night was Country and Western night, and he never missed it.

  ‘So what’s it all about?’ he asked, not unreasonably.

  ‘There was a murder in Heckley that night,’ Dave told him. ‘A man called Alfred Armitage. Your name came up.’

  ‘My name? Why should my name come up?’

  ‘It just did. Does Alfred Armitage mean anything to you?’

  ‘No. Never heard of him.’

  But he bit his lip as he made the denial, and started to scratch at a pretend Celtic design on his bicep.

  I said, ‘We know about your sister Julie, Mr Bousfield. It was a long time ago.’

  He turned his gaze to me. His face was tanned through working outdoors and his eyes were surprisingly pale blue. ‘Julie?’ he repeated. ‘What’s she got to do with it?’

  ‘It never really leaves you, does it, something like that?’ I said. ‘Do you still think about her?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘Every day.’

  ‘I’ve seen the photographs,’ I told him. ‘She was an attractive girl. It must have wrecked your family.’

  Something through the window appeared to catch his eye, but he was just remembering her, gathering his thoughts. A big patch of sunlight fell on his lap and bulging stomach, illuminating the tattoos on his forearms and sending flashes of light glancing off the half-pound of wrought gold around his wrist. He came back, saying, ‘Julie was special. She could have made something with her life. Not like me. Not like Dad. Dad was an arsehole, but he loved Julie. She was the apple of his eye. It killed him, too, when she was murdered. He didn’t live to see the trial.’

  ‘Do you have a job?’ I asked. I wasn’t interested, but I needed him talking.

  ‘Not really,’ he confessed. ‘A bit of this and that. Casual work on the farms, fruit picking, mushrooms, anything. I sometimes go down to Skeggy to work the fairground. Stuff like that. Nothing regular. I do paint jobs for the Angels, now and again.’

  ‘Hell’s Angels?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. I do airbrush designs on their bikes when I can get it. They pay well.’

  That’s what the smell was. Our man was an artist. I’d seen the sort of thing he did and it amazed me. Dave shuffled in his seat and crossed his legs. He was thinking the same as me.

  I said, ‘Do you have anything on the go at the moment?’ and he told me that he had. I asked to see it and he left us for a few seconds to retrieve his latest work from the teetering heaps of boxes in the other room. He came back carrying a long, torpedo-shaped petrol tank.

  I took it from him two-handed and admired his handiwork. I like to think that using an airbrush is easy and gimmicky, like painting on velvet, but the proportions were perfect, the colours well-toned and the detail immaculate. I couldn’t do it, and I went to art college.

  ‘Bat out of Hell,’ I said, recognising the album cover.

  ‘Yeah, it’s a favouri
te of theirs,’ he replied.

  ‘And mine.’ I studied the workmanship for a minute and carefully handed the tank back to him. ‘Do you have a bike, Mr Bousfield?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Not interested.’

  ‘But you have friends who have?’

  ‘They go in the pub, that’s all. Most of them are just posers. They have jobs. Nobody could afford a Harley without one.’

  ‘You were telling me about Julie.’

  He started at the mention of her name and gently placed the petrol tank on the cushioned seat where he’d slept. ‘Julie? What about her?’

  ‘The trial must have been a traumatic time for you. I believe you made some threats at the end of it.’

  ‘Yeah, well. I was upset, wasn’t I?’

  ‘He was called Terence Paul Hutchinson, and you threatened to kill him. Would you still like to kill him, Mr Bousfield?’

  ‘It was just talk.’

  ‘But would you still like to kill him?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose I would. Scum like him deserves to die.’

  ‘But you weren’t in Heckley on the ninth of May?’

  ‘No, I’ve never been to flamin’ Heckley. I don’t even know where it is.’

  ‘It’s in Yorkshire,’ I told him. ‘What about your Angel friends? Were any of them in town that night?’

  ‘How would I know? So who was this Alfred Whatsisname?’

  Dave showed him the picture but the only reaction it provoked was a shrug of the shoulders. Bousfield said it meant nothing to him.

  ‘Apparently Alfred Armitage bore a strong resemblance to Hutchinson, the Midnight Strangler,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. He might do.’

  I looked at my watch and went on, ‘But it’s not the same person. The real Terence Paul Hutchinson is safely locked up in Bentley prison. He’ll have had a warder gently shake his shoulder about half an hour ago and should be tucking into a full English about now.’

  Bousfield’s neck muscles tightened like tree roots at the thought of his sister’s murderer lording it in a category C prison. He clenched and unclenched his fists and breathed hard through his nose. Was it because he thought the man was dead? Huge veins ran down the inside of his arms, like strip maps of the River Nile, spreading into deltas at his wrists. In reality, Hutchinson would have been blasted out of his pit by a bell at six-thirty, and breakfasted on mechanically reclaimed pork sausage and lumpy porridge, eaten off a tin plate.

  He remembered some more names for his alibi and gave us a couple of addresses, but we knew it would check out. I took Dave back to the services where he’d left his car, and we drove home to Heckley. We weren’t fazed by Bousfield’s cast-iron alibi. He hadn’t done the deed himself, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t involved. Paint jobs like the one he’d shown us don’t come cheap, as our man had admitted, but cash is not the only currency, and Hell’s Angels are not affiliated to the Women’s Institute. The line of enquiry was still alive.

  My phone rang on the way home and I pulled into a lay-by to answer it. The ACC had decided that an appeal on Calendar and Look North was overdue, and I was nominated to do it. I grumbled but was overruled. They needed me at HQ by three o’clock. I stopped at Sainsbury’s to buy a Gazette and a sandwich, and parked near the cash machines while I dashed in.

  A black youth and a white girl were before me at the basket-only checkout. I followed them out and they climbed into a Jaguar XK8 convertible parked in a Disabled slot, with the hood down. ‘They didn’t get that on Motability allowance,’ I mumbled to myself. Almost without thinking about it I flipped my notebook open and wrote the number down. It’s all about stereotypes. It shouldn’t be, but it is, and experience often proves us right. As they drove off another convertible, this time a Mercedes SLK 320, nipped into the space they’d left. It was driven by a tall woman in heavily embroidered flared trousers cut low enough to be barely decent, a skimpy top and the obligatory shades. She had Mercedes written all over her, but the youth and girl were strictly Skoda Octavia. I watched her sashay away on four-inch heels and wrote her number under the other one, simply because I had a pen in my hand and it’s what we do.

  The newspaper had a half-page photo-collage of the race, with Sonia in two of the pictures. Return of the Gazelle, it said. In one photograph she was battling with Eunice Mboto, the girl who came second, and in the other she was with me, surrounded by admirers. Hers, that is, not mine. The caption named me, describing me as her coach. I’d have words with our press officer about that, but it was better than calling me her live-in lover. I carefully folded the paper and drove to the office, where I cleaned my teeth and brushed my hair, ready for the telecast.

  They’d prepared a statement for me, saying that Alfred was murdered and we wanted anyone who had seen a white van in the vicinity to come forward. It had been a sadistic crime for no apparent motive and we desperately needed to apprehend the killer. I asked for any unusual motorcycle to be added to the list of suspicious vehicles, and it was. Alfred was well known locally, I had to tell the world, and anyone who had seen him with strangers was asked to contact the police.

  I memorised most of it, declined having my face powdered, and we were away. Someone with a slightly familiar face introduced me as Acting Detective Chief Inspector Priest and I made the statement with barely a glance at the notes. Everybody said ‘Well done’ and I drove back to Heckley.

  Eddie Carmichael was in the office when I arrived back, his head in a newspaper. He looked up, saying, ‘Hi guv. How did it go?’

  ‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘No problem.’

  He held the paper for me to see, open at the sports page. ‘They’ll be having you on Celebrity Squares next.’

  ‘No chance. Do you want to volunteer as the acceptable face of the force? Your old pal Superintendent Stanwick is looking for someone.’

  ‘Nah, not me, guv. Everybody to his own, I say.’

  I said, ‘Don’t say you weren’t asked. You could be the next Michael Parkinson. What have you found?’

  ‘Nothing. Blank faces all round. Maybe the broadcast will jog a few memories.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. What do you know about Hell’s Angels?’

  He looked puzzled. ‘Same as anybody, I suppose. They’re a bunch of scruffy bikers scrounging off the state. In America they go round killing people, into drugs and what not. Over here they’re just a bunch of tosspots. What’s brought this up?’

  I told him about our interview with Bousfield. ‘Have a look into them, please, Eddie,’ I told him. ‘Have a word with the Serious Organised Crime Agency. They have experts on gangs. See if the Angels are active down in Lincolnshire, or into bumping people off. Anything at all. Bousfield is in the frame, good and large.’

  ‘Great,’ he said, glad to have something fresh to work at. ‘I’ll get on with it.’

  Half an hour later, just as I was finishing filling in the log book, Dave came in with a coffee for me. ‘How did the TV go?’ he asked.

  ‘No problem,’ I replied. ‘They said they might ask me to do the weather forecast if they’re ever short.’

  ‘Only the weather forecast? I’d have thought it would be Panorama at least. Have you seen the paper?’

  ‘About the race? Good, innit?’

  ‘Coach!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve heard it called some things…’

  I said, ‘Now now, Dave. Let’s not get personal.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that. Do you want me to start looking into the Hell’s Angels?’

  ‘Ah!’ I said. ‘No. I’ve asked Eddie to get on with it.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ he replied, and turned to go. I opened my mouth to call him back, then closed it again without saying anything. He’s a big boy.

  Half an hour later he brought me another coffee, but apart from me thanking him we didn’t speak. Another half-hour later he brought me another coffee, then it was time to go home.

  Sonia and I did our laps of the park, showered at home and dined on casserol
ed pork cutlets. At nine o’clock I took her to the station and introduced her to the staff in the incident room. We had four telephonists manning the phones to gather the responses to the broadcast, which had gone out at 6.25 on the BBC and 6.45 on ITV. They were not being overwhelmed. One was taking a call and the other three were chatting, their chairs turned at angles to their desks. A newspaper was folded with the crossword showing, almost completed, but I resisted the temptation to pick it up and have a go. I studied the reports we had and saw that some might be worth following up but that nothing stood out like a Rastafarian at a Ku Klux Klan tea party. There were the obvious crank calls, and the well-meaning ones that had nothing to say, but in the next few days every one would be chased. We went home and watched The Shawshank Redemption on video. OK, so I hadn’t caught a murderer, but it had been a near perfect day.

  Dave brought me a coffee next morning before I finished the tea I’d made for myself. I asked Jeff Caton to join me in the office and told him about the odd couple I’d seen in the posh Jaguar, taking up a Disabled space.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a crime, yet, Chas,’ he said.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ I told him. ‘It might be worth looking into. They were only in their early twenties. What does a car like that cost?’

  ‘About fifty-five grand.’

  ‘There you go, then. That’s the number.’ I pushed my notebook towards him and he copied it.

  ‘What’s this other one?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah!’ I started. ‘That one doesn’t matter. She was rather elegant, that’s all. In a nice car, too. A Merc. Very swish. Now she did look the part.’

  ‘You’re incorrigible, Charlie. I’ll look into it. By the way, you looked great on the telly.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And in the Gazette.’

  ‘I thought so, too, but it’s nice of you to say so.’

  ‘Is it true they’ve asked you to be the new face of Laboratoire Garnier?’

  ‘Get stuffed.’

  In the incident room I told the team about our trip to Lincolnshire and about the responses to the appeal. We had some legwork to do, but it didn’t look promising. Our best bet was still with the Hell’s Angels.