[Inspector Peach 05] - The Lancashire Leopard

by J M Gregson

  Back in the car park, he found it easier to rest in the comfortable leather seat of the Scorpio than he had expected. Must be getting old. For the first time, he admitted to himself that the Leopard had actually been disturbing his sleep patterns at nights. The sod was getting to him. He shut the killings resolutely out of his mind, even succeeded in dozing for a few minutes.

  And that was when the revelation came to him. He awoke with the idea complete in his mind, as clear as a mountain against a sharp blue winter sky. His recent interviews of suspects, his exchanges with Hamish Wishart, his discussions with his own team, all flashed before him in succession; each face, each idea, it seemed even each word, was as lucid as if it was being spoken now in this warm cubicle of car. And everything confirmed the revelation.

  *

  It was dark by the time DS Blake and DC Pickard got back to the Murder Room at Brunton CID.

  There were very few people there. With a new Leopard murder still screaming for investigation, most officers were out in the town checking various leads, working through the lists of men who had not already been cleared for one of the previous three killings.

  “I’ll stand you tea and a bun before we check our messages,” offered Lucy Blake. It was already after five o’clock and they might well have seized an early getaway while the opportunity was there, but she somehow fancied a natter. When every alley seemed to turn into a blind one, it felt as if you weren’t doing your duty if you went home without an exchange of ideas.

  “You’re on, Sarge,” said Tony Pickard promptly. “Two minutes in the little boys’ room, and I’m yours in the canteen. Mine’s a flapjack, by the way.”

  Lucy had half expected him to refuse, to make some excuse to get away. She wondered idly as she paid for the tea and two flapjacks if Tony was trying to impress a DS with his diligence, if he would have gone off home if it had been a fellow DC who had asked him. She didn’t really think so: Tony was new to the team, like Brendan Murphy, but she had worked quite a bit with him over the last few weeks, and he didn’t strike her as a promotion creeper.

  It seemed they would be the only two in the canteen. She took the tray to the far end of the big room, well away from the counter, so that any discussion they had should be a private one. You had to inculcate an appropriate caution in young officers, she thought, from the eminence of her twenty-six years. Well, nearly twenty-seven, as she told her mother; she must be at least four years older than Tony Pickard!

  As soon as Tony came into the canteen, she was struck by the change in his appearance. His face was strained and grey, and he was looking back over his shoulder to make certain he was not observed. He was carrying a small sports bag. He set it down carefully on the chair beside him as he sat down, where it could not be seen by anyone coming unexpectedly into the room.

  “What on earth’s the matter?” she asked.

  He answered her with another question. “Have you seen Brendan Murphy?” His voice, emerging as little more than a hoarse whisper, edged the query with melodrama.

  Lucy smiled, attempting to remove the tension. “No, I expect he’s gone home, unless he’s out in the town somewhere. Were you afraid he’d pinch your flapjack?” She pushed his tea and plate towards him, but he scarcely noticed the gesture. Lucy bit into her flapjack and waited to see what was troubling him: she had never seen Tony as agitated as this before; he had been calmness personified with Clyde Northcott an hour earlier.

  He stared down at his steaming cup without registering its presence. Presently he looked up at her, caught her small white teeth biting into her flapjack, and gave a small, nervous smile. He picked up his own slice and bit into it thoughtfully. Then he put both hands round his steaming cup, in a gesture which recalled to her the town’s dropouts, living in derelict buildings and conserving whatever tiny morsels of warmth they were offered in the winter cold.

  “You’d better spit it out,” said Lucy. “A trouble shared is a trouble halved, they say. Whoever ‘they’ might be.”

  He looked at her again with that little, shaken, half-smile. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but how much do you know about Brendan?” he said.

  “Rather less than you do, I should think. You’ve worked with him more than anyone else on the team. He joined the CID section only about a fortnight before you.”

  “He never lived in the section house with the rest of us. I did, until I got my own place.” Pickard was staring ahead of him, past Lucy, apparently voicing thoughts as they came to him.

  “No, he wouldn’t need to. He’s Brunton born and bred, is Brendan, despite his Irish name. I think he still lives at home with his parents.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He’s got his own house. I’ve been there several times.”

  Lucy sighed. “Stop warming your hands and drink that tea before it gets cold; I’ve finished mine. You’d better tell me exactly what’s worrying you. It needn’t go any further, if you don’t want it to.”

  Pickard looked at her, attempted a smile, drank the tea as meekly as if he had been a child. He stared ahead for a moment before he seemed to come to a decision. “All right. You remember Percy Peach put out this idea that the Leopard might just be a policeman, and I thought it was rather a joke?”

  “I remember that Percy passed on the suggestion from Dr Wishart, the forensic psychologist, that our man might be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a teacher, or just possibly a policeman. As I remember it, Percy said that he couldn’t believe it himself, but was passing it on for what it was worth.”

  If Tony registered her prickly defence of her man, he did not show it. “It would make sense though, wouldn’t it? Explain why the Leopard seems to be perpetually one step ahead of us.”

  “I suppose it would be one explanation, yes. There are others. Tony, you’d better come out with what you’re thinking. I shouldn’t need to tell you that there’s no case for sheltering a friend, in something as serious as this.”

  “No.” He looked round wildly at the deserted canteen, then stared down at his empty plate. In a second or two, he said dully, “All right. I think it’s possible Brendan Murphy might be the Leopard.”

  Lucy Blake glanced round automatically to make sure they were not overheard. She felt her own pulses pounding at the suggestion, told herself that it was important for her man-management that she should not ridicule this startling idea. This man had never thrown outlandish suggestions out before, had behaved quietly and responsibly earlier in the afternoon when Clyde Northcott might have riled him. She said, “How long have you been thinking that, Tony?”

  “For about ten minutes. Since I went into the locker room.”

  “So something suddenly put the idea in your head. What was it?”

  For a moment, he looked as if he would draw back, would refuse to talk even when he had gone so far. Then, with a sigh which seemed to be wrung from deep within him, he said, “Brendan’s locker is next to mine. I noticed the door wasn’t quite shut. So I opened it to slam it shut — they lock automatically. That’s when I saw these. They were on the shelf at the top of his locker.”

  He slid the sports bag on to the table between them, but did not extract the contents. Instead, he carefully held back the sides to allow her to see inside it. She realised immediately why he was so careful that no one else should see this.

  She was gazing down at a pair of brand new thick leather gardening gloves.

  *

  Peach eased the Scorpio back on to the M6. He drove slowly at first, unable to believe the logic of his own thoughts, going over certain exchanges again and again in his mind to confirm them. Then, as the idea took firm root, he speeded up the car. It was almost dark already, and the traffic would thicken as he got near Manchester.

  He wondered whether to take the M56, risking the rush-hour traffic round Manchester and Bolton, then decided to stick to the M6. He would race north, joining the A59 near Preston; he could be in the Brunton CID within twenty minutes from there, with luck.

  He was impatie
nt now, anxious to be back with his colleagues, to test his notion against their perceptions. He wouldn’t bother with Tommy Bloody Tucker, of course. Nor even with DI Parkinson of the Serious Crime Squad. There was no point in that: Parkinson was competent enough, but he didn’t know the people involved. He would speak to Lucy Blake first, on her own. She was his DS, after all, so no one could cavil at that. He needed to convince himself that there wasn’t a perfectly sensible explanation of this after all, that he wasn’t going to make a monumental fool of himself by going public on it.

  The time seemed to be racing past, whilst he was held in a hiatus of inaction. Yet when he glanced down the needle on his speedo was approaching ninety. He made himself slow to a steady eighty. It took a real effort of will.

  *

  DS Blake stared for long seconds at the gardening gloves, then motioned silently to Tony Pickard to close the bag.

  He said dully, “They’re only a pair of gardening gloves, I suppose.”

  “New ones. The kind everyone says the Leopard uses.” Lucy felt like a reluctant prosecuting counsel.

  “The kind sold in their thousands every week. That’s probably why the Leopard chose to use them.”

  “Yes, but we have to investigate them, don’t we?” She was gentle but insistent.

  He nodded, then said reluctantly, “I don’t think they’re the kind of gloves Brendan would be buying for any innocent reason.”

  She looked at him sharply, then said, “You’ve been to his house. Does it have a garden?”

  “A small one, yes. Mainly at the back.”

  “Well, then. Perhaps Brendan’s about to tackle some winter work.” She smiled, as if by relaxing her tension she could make the bag and its contents go away.

  Tony Pickard could not relax. He said, “I considered that. He’s no gardener, Brendan. The place is a bit of a wilderness.”

  “That’s it, then. He’s made a resolution to do something about it. He’s going to tidy the place up.”

  Still Tony Pickard could not smile. He shook his head bleakly. “In February? The weeds would have to be coming in through the windows, before Brendan was moved to tackle them. Besides, what chance do we get to garden, whilst this Leopard business is on? No time during the week and precious little at the weekend, at present.”

  It was true enough. She thought of putting other innocent solutions to him, such as that Brendan Murphy had bought the gloves not for himself, but for his parents, or a friend, though she knew that Tony would have considered these things for himself. But she knew that what she had said at the outset was true: they were going to have to investigate this. You couldn’t afford to ignore any leads, however strange the directions in which they pointed.

  She wished Percy was here, ready with a decision, whether it was to deride the notion or to spring into swift action. But she knew what he would have said: you’re paid as a DS to take responsibility, to act on your own initiative when it’s appropriate. There won’t always be DIs around to take the responsibility. She could almost hear him saying it, though he would probably have put it more trenchantly.

  And there was a tiny part of her which said that this crazy thought of Tony’s might just be true, and that she could bring in the Leopard, on her own. Well, with Tony Pickard’s help, of course. She would give him all due credit, if the incredible idea she had drawn from him turned out in the end to be justified.

  She said tersely, “Where was Brendan last Friday night? If he was on duty, that would stop this idea at source, before we go any further with it.”

  “He was off duty when Sally Cartwright was killed. I know from my own rota. And I’ve thought about the first three, in the last few minutes. Brendan was off on all the nights concerned.”

  “All right. We’ll check it out. Do you know where he is now?”

  “Maybe at home? He’s not in the station.”

  “Right. No time like the present. Let’s go and confront him with those gloves.”

  Tony looked aghast at the thought of confronting his friend and colleague. “Shouldn’t we wait for Percy Peach to come back?”

  She smiled. He seemed to be feeling the same urge she had to shrug this off on to higher-ranking shoulders, to let others take responsibility for investigating what might make them both laughing stocks around the station. She said, “We can’t, Tony, can we? He probably won’t be available until tomorrow morning. And if it is the Leopard we’re talking about, we can’t afford to leave it overnight, just in case…we can’t take the risk. We’ll go out there now.”

  “But just the two of us? Shouldn’t we take someone else with us? Or at least let them know we’re going?”

  “Do you feel we need reinforcements?”

  He frowned. “No. I can handle Brendan. And at least...well…”

  “At least there will only be the two of us involved, when this proves to be an almighty farce? Yes. I’m glad you’ve thought of that, too. I’ve agreed this warrants investigation, but I’m no more anxious than you to let others in on it if it proves to be a wild goose chase.”

  “I’m sure it will. But you’re right, we can’t leave it. I’ve tried Brendan on my radio in case he’s out in the town, but I haven’t picked him up. Mind you, it’s been on the blink all day.”

  “Try mine. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  She made a swift visit to the ladies’ locker room, then joined Tony in CID. He looked both uncomfortable and disappointed as he gave her back her radio. “No luck. Brendan must be at home. He’d probably be out of range there, even if it was switched on. Sarge, are you sure you want to tackle him head-on like this? Perhaps we should sleep on it, buttonhole him when he comes in tomorrow, let him—”

  “You know that isn’t on. Come on. The sooner it’s over with, the better, as far as I’m concerned!” She turned for the door without another look at him.

  They passed out of the station, swift and silent as conspirators. Lucy, all thoughts of picking up her messages swept away in the thrill of the chase, was glad that she didn’t have to drive. In the front passenger seat of Tony Pickard’s Mondeo, she folded her arms and indulged her vision of radioing back to the station with the news that they had arrested the Leopard.

  Twenty

  Peach made good progress until he was within three miles of the point where he was to leave the M6. There, where the northbound M61 from Manchester joins the longer motorway, there was trouble.

  The back of one of the huge juggernauts speeding north had caught the cab of a much smaller lorry, sending it spinning across the hard shoulder and through the barrier at the side. There did not seem to be any serious injury, but two lanes of the M6 were shut, and a four-mile jam had built up within ten minutes. Peach tried to be philosophical as the single lane of cars inched forward. He watched the drivers rubber-necking as they passed the scene of the mishap, and marvelled once again at the public’s taste for the macabre.

  If they knew what he knew, they would really be excited. Or thought he knew: he corrected himself. What had seemed so certain, so logical, sixty miles back seemed more outlandish as he neared the place where he would have to do something about it. During one of the many minutes whilst he was stationary, waiting for the vehicles in front to filter into the one lane available for them, he rang Lucy Blake on her personal mobile phone.

  There was no reply. She must still be at work, then — she always switched her personal phone off when she was working. The traffic ground to a halt again in front of him, giving him time for reflection. He was glad that he had this personal relationship with his DS. He would be able to talk to Lucy completely off the record before he went public on this. She would tell him in no uncertain terms if she thought he was going to make a fool of himself.

  He smiled at the thought of her flushed, excited face as she argued with him.

  *

  It was after six now, and the Brunton evening rush hour was tailing off. Tony Pickard drove without haste, as if he was suddenly anxious not to reach t
he house of the man who for the last five months had been his friend.

  Lucy thought he was probably rehearsing what might happen when they got there, how he might best confront Brendan Murphy with their astonishing theory. She tried the same thing herself, but she couldn’t get near to imagining how the conversation might go. Murphy would laugh in their faces, she was sure of that. But then he would be bound to do that, even if he was the Leopard. After his laughter, she couldn’t think what would happen.

  They ran out of town and into country; with the side of her head against the window, she got her first glimpse of stars against the black void of the night. Brendan Murphy lived on the edge of the small town of Padiham, some eight miles from Brunton. Far away from any of his colleagues in CID, thought Lucy. In a place where a man might be dangerously alone with his own thoughts, where he might develop his own strange plans.

  Tony Pickard spoke for the first time since they had left the station. “Do you remember the map Percy Peach showed us of the Leopard’s murders?” he said.

  His voice seemed oddly clear in the warm car, as if the momentous nature of their mission was sharpening their senses. Lucy said, “Yes. The one showing the geographical distribution of the killings.”

  “Yes. It’s just struck me. They were neatly distributed, weren’t they? The first one was west of Brunton, on the outskirts of Preston; the second was pretty well north, near Clitheroe; the third was in Brunton itself; and the fourth one, last Friday, was due south.”

  “Yes. Wishart thought that implied the killer was Brunton-oriented, moving his killings around the central point of the town. What of it?”

  “Well, the Leopard seems to have a passion for neatness. And the only direction from Brunton where there hasn’t been a killing, the one necessary to complete the pattern, is due east, out towards the Pennines.”