“Right up my street?” Rutter repeated, mystified.
“Aye, it’s what you might call a rock’n’roll murder. Maybe the first one there’s ever been.”
Three
The ferry chugged stoically across the grey-blue water towards Liverpool’s Pier Head. It was a mild morning in early April. The sun shone down benevolently on the docks – those same docks which had made Liverpool rich during the height of the slave trade, and had been the target for so much of the German Luftwaffe’s fury during the war. Overhead, sea birds glided on the air currents and cawed incessantly. Underfoot, the boat’s engine sent vibrations throbbing through the deck floorboards. An hour earlier, the ferry had been packed with commuters, but now the two men on the upper deck pretty much had it to themselves.
“We didn’t need to take the train to Birkenhead, you know, sir,” Bob Rutter said. “I checked up in the timetable. There was a direct connection from Euston to Liverpool Lime Street.”
“So I believe,” Woodend replied. “But if we’d gone direct, we wouldn’t have had the pleasure of arrivin’ in the ’Pool in style, would we?”
Rutter permitted himself a grin. He supposed he should be grateful that the ferry trip was putting his boss in such a good mood, because the journey up from London had been by diesel train, and Woodend – who thought that the only manly way to travel was under steam power – had been distinctly grumpy about it.
Woodend reached into one of the voluminous pockets of his hairy sports jacket and pulled out a package carefully wrapped in greaseproof paper. Rutter made a private bet with himself it contained corned-beef sandwiches, with the bread cut doorstep thick, and when his boss had unwrapped it, he saw that he was right.
“Dickens used to like comin’ to Liverpool, you know,” Woodend said, before taking a generous bite out of his sandwich.
“Did he, sir?”
“Aye, he did that. He said that it was his next favourite town after London. He used to take the ferry across the Mersey regularly. Claimed it helped him to clear his head.”
Rutter shook his own head, wonderingly. Charlie Woodend and his Charles Dickens. The chief inspector was fond of saying that his favourite author should be used as part of the police training course, and though there were other officers who thought he was only joking, his own sergeant knew that he was deadly serious.
“I’ve got some old friends in Liverpool,” Woodend said. He paused. “Some old enemies, an’ all, if it comes to that.”
Rutter simply nodded. That was how things were with his boss, he’d learned – either people liked him so much they’d climb a tree for him, or else they felt much happier when he was out of the way.
The chief inspector examined the dock front. Cranes were busy unloading cargoes from ships weighed down with fruit fresh from Africa. Liners, heading for American and Australia, bobbed quietly in the water and waited for the right tide. Even from a distance, he could sense the bustle.
“Bein’ a southerner, you’ll not have been here before, will you, Bob?” he asked, somehow making Rutter’s unfamiliarity with the town sound like a character defect.
“No, sir, I haven’t,” the sergeant replied, deadpan.
“It’s a grand place,” Woodend told him. “There’s a lot of life – a lot of excitement – in it. Do you know, I’m rather lookin’ forward to workin’ on this case.”
“Are you indeed,” Rutter said, raising a surprised eyebrow.
“An’ what’s that supposed to mean? Is it some clever grammar-school way of takin’ the piss?” Woodend asked, without rancour.
Rutter grinned again. It was not the first time that Woodend had brought up his grammar-school education, and he was sure it would be far from the last.
“It’s just that I thought a country boy like you would be much happier working in a village,” he explained.
The chief inspector sighed – a clear indication that he thought his sergeant had missed a fundamental point.
“You can’t just define villages by geography,” he said. He tapped his forehead. “Villages are up here – in your noggin.”
“Would you care to explain that, sir?” Rutter asked, knowing his boss would, whether he wanted him to or not.
“Nobody lives in a city,” Woodend said. “It’s too big for the mind to take in. No, what people do is they build up their own little world which is bounded by their house, the pub they drink in, the place they work, an’ their corner shop. They might venture out into the rest of the city now an’ again, but when they do, they’re only visitin’.”
He was probably right, Rutter decided, thinking of his own childhood in north London.
“An’ then there’s the other kind of village,” Woodend continued. “The village that is made up by havin’ shared interests. It could be an amateur dramatic society, or a pigeon-fanciers’ association, but when all those people who share that interest get together, what you have is a community.”
“I see your point, sir,” Rutter said, but what he was thinking was, ‘Read your Dickens, Sergeant. You’ll find it all there in Dickens.’
“Read your Dickens, Sergeant,” Woodend told him. “You’ll find it all there in Dickens.”
He had finished his sandwich and now reached into another of his pockets, and pulled out a packet of Capstan Full Strength cigarettes. He did not offer one to Rutter, having long ago accepted that his sergeant – for some strange reason of his own – preferred to smoke fags with an American cork tip.
“You’ve been on the blower to the Liverpool bobbies, haven’t you, lad?” he asked, striking a match and lighting up.
“Yes, sir. Just before we left London.”
“So what did they have to tell you?”
“The dead man . . .” Rutter began. “Well, the dead boy, really – he was only just twenty—”
“A bit younger than you, then,” Woodend interrupted, a look of amusement flashing briefly across his face. “Carry on, lad.”
“The dead boy belonged to a band called the Seagulls.”
“Should I have heard of them?” Woodend asked. “Are they famous, like this Buddy Ivy you’re always listenin’ to?”
“Buddy Holly,” Rutter corrected him. “No, sir, they’re not. Most of the famous groups are either American, or are based in the London area. Coming from the North is a little . . .” He groped for the right word.
“Unfashionable?” Woodend provided.
“I suppose so.”
“Aye, your lot from down south never did give my lot much credit,” the chief inspector said. “So, you were tellin’ me all about these singin’ sea birds.”
“According to the local sergeant I talked to, they’re very popular around the Liverpool area,” Rutter said. “They’ve played in Germany, too. Hamburg, I think. Anyway, they were booked to appear at in a place called the Cellar Club the day before yesterday. They started playing, but the lead guitarist’s amplifier wasn’t working properly. He bent down to adjust the bass control, and was electrocuted. Someone had wrapped a live wire around the spindle. The Liverpool Police are convinced the re-wiring was done with malice aforethought.”
“What I still don’t understand is why it should have killed him,” Woodend said. “I got a shock from the mains once, an’ I’m still here.”
Rutter looked a little embarrassed. “It’s a bit technical, sir.”
“You’re a bright lad. You should be able to explain it even to a stone-age bobby like me,” Woodend said.
“All right. Where were you when you got your shock?” Rutter asked.
“Upstairs. In the front bedroom.”
“Eddie Barnes was in a cellar, much closer to the ground. Were your hands wet when you got the shock?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“There’s apparently very little ventilation at the club. Even if he’d only been there for a few minutes, Barnes would already have been sweating – and electrical current loves to travel through moisture. What were you wearing on your
feet?”
“Carpet slippers.”
“With rubber soles. Good insulation. Eddie Barnes was wearing leather boots with metal studs in them.”
“I still don’t see it,” Woodend admitted.
“Think of electricity as water and you and Eddies Barnes as dams. The current wants to get through you and out again on the other side, but because you’re well insulated – because there’s no crack in your dam – it can’t. Eddie’s a different matter. The electricity finds a number of gaps in his dam, and it gushes through destroying everything in its path. Do you get it now, sir?”
“Aye, I think so,” Woodend said. “So somebody wanted him dead, an’ re-wired his amp. Does anybody have any idea when this re-wirin’ might have been done?”
Rutter shrugged. “Sometime between the last time he used the equipment and the moment it killed him.”
“That’s not much help,” Woodend mused. “Witnesses?”
“Round about three hundred of them actually saw the murder, but the police haven’t managed to turn up anyone who saw the murderer tampering with the equipment.”
The chief inspector threw his cigarette end over the side of the boat, and watched it fly through the air current until it crash-landed in the grey-blue river.
“Nasty things – murders by remote control,” he said. “The killer’s got no problems with an alibi, has he? He could have been right in the room when the poor lad got himself electrocuted. On the other hand, he could have been miles away, havin’ a coffee with his mates.”
Rutter smiled in a way which alerted his boss to the fact that he thought he was about to score a point.
“It’s not like you to be prejudiced, sir,” he said.
“Prejudiced?” Woodend repeated. “What are you talkin’ about?”
Rutter’s smile broadened. “You keep saying ‘he’. Does that mean you’ve ruled out the possibility that the murderer’s a woman?”
“I can’t say I’ve even thought about rulin’ it out consciously,” Woodend admitted. “But now you mention it, I suppose I have.”
“Because of the murder method?”
It was rare to see the chief inspector look uncomfortable, but he did at that moment.
“Well, you know,’ he said awkwardly. “Women and electricity. They don’t really mix, do they?”
Rutter laughed. “You’re behind the times, sir,” he said. “Girls brought up since the war have a different attitude to ones you would have gone out with when you were young. Why, Maria wired her whole study herself. Of course, that was before her accident.”
Her accident. Woodend marvelled at the calm, controlled way his sergeant could say the words, but he knew it was taking Bob Rutter a considerable about of effort to maintain that calm.
“I don’t often ask about Maria,” he said. “The way I see it, if you want to tell me anythin’ about her, then you will. But I’m always thinkin’ about her – worryin’ about her.”
“I know you are, sir,” Rutter said gratefully. “But you shouldn’t worry. She’s treating the whole business of finding her way around as a challenge – almost an adventure.”
“She always was a kid with spirit,” Woodend said admiringly. “You’re a lucky man.”
“You don’t need to tell me that,” Rutter replied.
They had almost reached Pier Head, and could see a uniformed police inspector standing on the pier and gazing up at the boat.
“That’ll be our reception committee,” Woodend said. “Wonder how long it’s goin’ to take me to get him house-trained?”
Near the stage of the Cellar Club, the two old women who supplemented their state pensions with a cleaning job were mopping the floor. Standing by the snack bar, and half watching them, were a man and a woman. The woman was Alice Pollard, the owner of the club, a brassy blonde who would never see the right side of forty again. The man was much younger, perhaps no more than twenty-three or twenty-four, and had muscles which threatened to burst his shirt buttons every time he breathed out. His name was Rick Johnson, and for the last six months he had been employed as Alice Pollard’s doorman.
Alice looked down longingly at the whisky bottle which was resting on the counter. It was a bit early in the day for her first drink, but what with the murder and everything, she reckoned she deserved one. She poured herself a generous measure, and knocked it back in one gulp.
“I’d go bit easier on that if I was you, Alice,” Rick Johnson advised her.
Ignoring the warning, the woman poured herself a second shot.
“It said in the paper that the local bluebottles have given up trying to solve the case themselves and have called in Scotland Yard,” she said.
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Johnson replied irritably. “I can read, you know.”
“Course you can,” Alice Pollard said in a soothing voice. “The thing is, it’s obvious that these fellers from London are going to be a lot more thorough than the bobbies we’ve had to deal with so far.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Johnson demanded.
“You know what it means. It means they’ll be taking a much closer look at you than the Liverpool Police did.”
“An’ what if they do? I had no reason to kill Eddie Barnes,” Johnson protested.
Alice Pollard sighed loudly. “They won’t see it like that, and you know it,” she said.
“Then to hell with them!”
“It’s not that easy, luv. I only wish it was. They’ve got to arrest somebody for this murder, and the way things are looking you’re a pretty good candidate.”
“What do you want me to do?” Rick Johnson asked, more sulky than annoyed now.
“Just keep your head down for a while. Don’t go charging around like a bull in a china shop like you usually do. If they talk to you, try smiling at them now and again, instead of looking like you’d like to catch them alone down a dark alley.” She reached across and put her hand on his arm. “I’m only saying this because I care about you. I care about you very much.”
“I know you do, Alice. An’ I care about you an’ all.”
“So you’ll follow my advice, will you?”
“Yes, I’ll follow your advice,” Johnson said, without much conviction.
Babysitting the men from London had not been a job anyone else had wanted, Inspector Brian Hopgood thought, as he watched the Birkenhead-to-Liverpool ferry docking – but that only showed what a lack of foresight his colleagues had.
Woodend’s reputation had put the others off, and prevented them from seeing the fact that this investigation presented a tremendous opportunity. At the very least, the officer who worked with the men from Scotland Yard would get some of the kudos if the case were solved. And that was the very least. At best, if all went according to plan, Hopgood could take Woodend’s findings, add his own local knowledge, and make the arrest himself.
He could imagine the newspaper headline – ‘Local inspector succeeds where Scotland Yard fails’! Oh yes, this was the chance he’d been looking for ever since he’d joined the force, and he wasn’t about to blow it just because a few of the spineless bastards back at the station had been muttering about just how difficult Cloggin’-it Charlie Woodend could be.
The ferry mooring ropes had been tied firmly around the capstan, and now, slowly and creakingly, the gangplank was being lowered. Hopgood lit up a Player’s Navy Cut, and steeled himself to meet the ogre whom lesser men stood in dread of.
His first sight of Woodend was reassuring. Certainly he was a big feller, as ogres are supposed to be, but from the way he was looking around him with obvious – almost naïve – interest, he seemed more like a rustic on his first visit to a large city than he did a hotshot up from New Scotland Yard.
The inspector stepped forward and held out his hand. “Brian Hopgood, sir,” he said in the firm but reassuring tone he’d spent long hours perfecting. “I’ll be your liaison with the Liverpool Police.”
Woodend shook the hand, and ran his e
yes quickly up and down the local flatfoot. Hopgood was in his mid-thirties, the chief inspector guessed. He had probably only just made the height qualification, had thin pointed features and the sort of eyes which suggested craftiness rather than intelligence. He probably wasn’t a bad bobby in his own way, but he was certainly not one Woodend wanted to let anywhere near a murder investigation.
The chief inspector cocked his head in the general direction of Rutter.
“This is my sergeant,” he said. “Bob Rutter. He was a grammar-school boy, you know, which means that he probably has more brains in that head of his than you an’ me have between us. Which is another way of sayin’ that he’s got my complete an’ utter confidence, so if he asks for anythin’, there’s no need to check back with me if he should have it. Understood?”
So much for the pleasantries, Inspector Hopgood thought. “Yes, sir, it’s understood,” he said.
“Right,” Woodend continued. “Have you booked us in at a bed an’ breakfast or summat?”
“We’ve got you rooms at the Adelphi, sir.”
Woodend raised an eyebrow in mock astonishment.
“The Adelphi!” he repeated. “My, but we are grand. We’d better make this case last as long as possible, then, Sergeant.”
“Sir?” Rutter asked quizzically.
“The Adelphi is probably the best hotel in Liverpool,” Woodend told him. “You’ll not be stayin’ in its like again – not on a bobby’s wages, you won’t – so like I say, we better make the investigation last.”
A look of concern appeared on Inspector Hopgood’s face.
“That’s just Mr Woodend’s little joke,” Rutter explained.
Hopgood turned his attention to the chief inspector, as if looking for confirmation.
“Aye, I’m a great one for makin’ little jokes,” Woodend assured him. His eyes narrowed. “I sincerely hope, Inspector, that the Adelphi Hotel – as grand as it is – isn’t too far from the scene of the crime. Because if it is too far, it’s no bloody good to me.”
“How far is too far, sir?” Hopgood asked.
“If I can walk it from one place to the other in fifteen minutes, that’ll be good enough for me.”
Death of a Cave Dweller Page 3
