Death of a Cave Dweller

by Sally Spencer

  “You were just about to get somethin’ off your chest, weren’t you, Billie?” Woodend asked.

  Billie Simmons shook his head. “No. You’ve got it wrong. I was just talkin’ about the good old days in Hamburg. That’s all.”

  He rose to his feet and made a rapid exit.

  Rutter slid into the chair the drummer had just vacated.

  “Now that’s what I call bloody good timin’,” Woodend said grumpily.

  “I beg your pardon, sir.”

  “That lad, Billie, was just about to tell his Uncle Charlie somethin’ very interestin’.”

  “What about?”

  “I’ve no idea, because he saw you with your smart suit an’ neat haircut, an’ he clammed up tighter than a duck’s backside.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Rutter said.

  “Oh, it’s not your fault,” Woodend told him. “It was just unlucky you happened to come in at the moment you did.” He took out his cigarettes and lit one up. “So how did things go down at the local nick?”

  “Inspector Hopgood’s a lot happier now that we’ve given him something positive to do,” Bob Rutter said. “He’s got half a dozen men out on the street asking Jack Towers’ neighbours if they saw the man who pushed the poison-pen letter through the door.”

  “That’s good,” Woodend said. “Not only does it keep the bugger off our backs for a while, but he might actually find out somethin’ useful.”

  Rutter smiled, and in that smile Woodend thought he detected the slightest hint of a look of self-congratulation.

  “I may just have found out a couple of useful things myself, sir,” the sergeant said.

  “Oh aye? An’ what exactly might these few interestin’ things be, young Robert?”

  “I’ve been checking on which of the people who might be involved in this case have criminal records.”

  “And which ones do?”

  “Well, for a start, there’s Mrs Pollard.”

  Woodend raised one eyebrow. “The brassy blonde? Really? What’s she been up to?”

  Rutter lit one of his cork-tipped cigarettes. “Recently, she’s been up to nothing at all. But before she ever met her husband – which must have been back when Adam was a lad – she was on the game.”

  “Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs!” Woodend said. But he was thinking: ‘Back when Adam was a lad.’ Bloody hell, he makes her sound ancient, and she’s younger than I am.

  “She was nicked a couple of times for soliciting outside Lime Street Station,” Rutter continued, not noticing his boss’s expression. “She’s never actually done time, but she paid a few fines.”

  “An’ now she’s a successful club owner,” Woodend mused.

  “Leslie Pollard, her late husband, was a rag-and-bone merchant. Started with a horse and cart, but eventually bought his own lorry. According to an old bobby I talked to down at the station, most people who knew him thought he was a bit slow – especially when he decided to marry a woman who was well known to be a prostitute – but he can’t have been that thick, can he, or he’d never have got enough money together to buy what eventually became the Cellar Club?”

  “Are there any suspicious circumstances surroundin’ his death?” the chief inspector asked.

  Rutter shook his head. “He was coming out of the pub with some of his mates last thing one Saturday night. All the witnesses said he’d had a fair amount to drink, and he simply lost his balance. It was just hard luck for him that he hit the kerb badly. He had a brain haemorrhage and died on the way to hospital.”

  Woodend nodded. “You said you’d been lookin’ at criminal records in the plural. Who else have you got somethin’ on?”

  “Rick Johnson.”

  “Ah, your favourite candidate for toppin’ Eddie Barnes,” Woodend said. “I already know about him. He’s been inside for GBH, hasn’t he? Eighteen months he got, if I remember correctly.”

  “That’s right. Eighteen months,” Rutter agreed. “Then, of course there’s Steve Walker.”

  “Has he got a record?”

  “He’s never actually been charged with anything, but he’s no stranger to the police station. From what I could gather, he doesn’t need much an excuse to start throwing punches.”

  “Yes. I’d already got the impression that young Steve has a bit of a temper on him.”

  Rutter’s smile was now definitely self-congratulatory. “Do you know what’s really interesting, sir?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t,” the chief inspector said dryly. “Why don’t you enlighten me, lad.”

  “The last time Rick Johnson was in any trouble with the police was about a month ago. He got into a fight with another man in a pub. According to eyewitnesses again, it could have turned quite nasty if a third chap hadn’t appeared and broken it up. Anyway, the constable on the beat walked Johnson down the local nick, where they knew him well, and where he would have been charged right then and there – but for one thing.”

  Woodend sighed heavily. “I know you like to spin your stories out, lad,” he said, “an’ I’m sure you’d be a big hit on the music-hall circuit. But you have to admit, this is a bit long-winded even for you.”

  Rutter grinned, sheepishly. “Sorry, sir. The reason that Rick Johnson wasn’t charged with the assault was that the victim went down the police station himself, said it was all his own fault, and insisted he’d give evidence to that effect if the case ever got to court.”

  “So?” Woodend asked.

  “So the man Rick Johnson attacked – apparently for no reason – was Eddie Barnes . . .”

  “Really?” Woodend said.

  “. . . and the man who split them up before any real damage could be done was Steve Walker.”

  “Now that is interestin’,” the chief inspector agreed.

  Eleven

  Woodend stood in the doorway of the Grapes, looking at the little drama which was unfolding just across the road in front of the Cellar Club. There were two participants. One of them was Rick Johnson. The other was a smaller man who was probably around the same age as the bouncer. He was wearing blue overalls, and from the oil stains on them it seemed likely that he was some kind of mechanic.

  For someone who often thought with his fists, Rick Johnson seemed to go in for a lot of intense conversations, Woodend thought. First there had been the one with his wife on the hard seats in front of the Cellar Club stage; then the one with Mrs Pollard, during which she’d managed to touch his arm twice; and now here he was in deep discussion with a man who was a complete stranger to the chief inspector.

  The smaller man was reaching forward, and poking Johnson in the chest. The doorman angrily brushed his arm aside. For a couple of seconds, it looked as if they would both start throwing punches. Then the smaller man turned and strode furiously away.

  Woodend walked across the street, aware that Johnson’s eyes were on him, feeling the other man’s hostility even from a distance.

  “That feller a mate of yours, is he?” he asked the doorman when he was close enough to speak without shouting.

  “No, he isn’t,” Rick Johnson replied sulkily.

  “But you’re obviously acquainted with him.”

  “Yes, I know him. He’s a troublemaker. That’s why, when he asked if he could get into the club, I told him he couldn’t.”

  “Funny that he should try to get into the club at all in overalls, isn’t it?” Woodend asked. “Most of the lads wear suits.”

  “He said he only had an hour for dinner, an’ he didn’t have time to go home an’ get changed,” Rick Johnson told him. “An’ said that I wouldn’t have let him into the club whatever he’d been wearin’.”

  What were the chances that a man in overalls would even think of trying to get into a club like the Cellar? Woodend wondered. Very slight. Rick Johnson, Woodend decided, wasn’t a very good liar – or, at least, he wasn’t making a very good job of it on this particular occasion.

  “There’s a question I’ve been meanin’ to
ask you, Mr Johnson,” the chief inspector said.

  “Look,” Johnson snarled, “I’ve told you until I’m sick of bloody tellin’ you that I know bugger all about Eddie Barnes’s murder.”

  “It’s not Eddie’s murder I want to know about. Tell me about the fight you had with him a month ago.”

  “What fight?”

  Woodend sighed. “That bright young sergeant of mine has been down at the local nick an’ had a good look at your sheet. It’s all down there in black an’ white. So why don’t you co-operate, Mr Johnson? All I want to know is what the fight was about.”

  “We . . . er . . . well, we had a bit of a disagreement, you see,” Johnson said reluctantly.

  “Aye, people who end up in fights normally do,” Woodend said dryly. “What I really want to know is who disagreed with who about what, an’ which of you threw the first punch.”

  Rick Johnson looked down at the ground. “I can’t remember now,” he muttered.

  “You’ve forgotten all about an incident which could have had you back inside?” Woodend asked incredulously. “An incident which happened only last month? Come on, lad, stop pullin’ my leg.”

  Johnson’s chin was set at a stubborn angle. “I’ve told you, I don’t remember,” he said.

  “Do you know how it looks to me?” Woodend asked.

  He allowed a short pause for Rick Johnson to speak, but the doorman was clearly set on saying nothing.

  “It looks to me as if you had a pretty big grudge against Eddie Barnes,” he continued. “At first, you thought you could settle it in your usual way – with your fists. But after the fight you found that whatever he’d done to make you upset was still eatin’ away at you.”

  “I never—” Johnson interrupted.

  “I haven’t finished,” Woodend told him. “It was then that you must have realised you were goin’ to have to do somethin’ more if you were ever to get rid of the achin’ in your guts. So on the night before Eddie died, you waited until all the others had gone home, then you went into the dressin’ room an’ you re-wired Eddie’s equipment.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” Rick Johnson said.

  “You’re right,” Woodend admitted. “I don’t. Even if you did hate Eddie badly enough to want to kill him, electrocution just wouldn’t be your style. But I’m not the only bobby workin’ on this case, you know, an’ there’s others who might take a completely different view to mine. So what you should be really doin’, lad, is makin’ every possible effort to clear your name. An’ you could start by tellin’ me about the fight.”

  Rick Johnson’s gaze was still fixed firmly on the pavement. “I’ve got nothin’ more to say,” he grunted.

  Woodend shrugged. “Well, I’ve given you your chance,” he said. “If you don’t choose to take it, then it’s your own funeral.”

  The lunchtime session of the Cellar Club presented the chief inspector with no surprises. From half-way down the stairs he could see the army of beehive hairdos bobbing up and down in uneasy harmony with the rhythm which vibrated through the walls and the brick floor. At the bottom of the steps he passed a group of young men who were smoking, digging each other in the ribs, and assessing their chances of making a dinnertime pick-up.

  If the lads really wanted to get off with the crumpet, Woodend thought as he made his way to the snack bar, they should learn to play an instrument and join a group.

  “Tea?” mouthed the girl behind the counter, the actual word drowned out by the sound of Mickey Finn and the Knockouts’ loud rendition of ‘The Hippy Hippy Shake’.

  “Tea,” Woodend agreed.

  There was no puzzled expression on the girl’s face, as there’d been the first time she saw him, Woodend thought. Now she accepted him in just the same way as she probably accepted her own parents – an inevitable feature in her world, but not really of it.

  He shook his head, and lit up a Capstan Full Strength. On none of his other cases had he ever felt so out of his depth, and it didn’t exactly help to realise that Bob Rutter – who was supposed to be his protégeé – was becoming more and more comfortable in this environment which he himself found so alien. He was still a few weeks short of his fiftieth birthday, he reminded himself, but already there were so many options which had closed to him, whether he liked it or not.

  He couldn’t go up in a rocket, because, unlike the Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, he wasn’t twenty-seven any more. His chances of playing professional football for Accrington Stanley were long since passed, too, as was the possibility that he might learn to play the trumpet and start his own jazz band. The only thing he had to look forward to was grandchildren – and if that wasn’t an old man’s thought, what was? Maybe it was time to stop the world and get off. Perhaps his best course would be to take whatever pension he was entitled to, and settle down in a nice cosy environment he would understand, like that of private security.

  The group finished playing, and Mickey Finn made his way towards the snack bar. He was half-way down the tunnel when he noticed Woodend standing there, and the chief inspector was sure that, for the moment, the young singer was tempted to turn around. But he didn’t, and by the time he reached the snack bar he had even managed to force a friendly smile on to his face.

  “I’ve got a couple more questions that I’d like to ask you, Mr Finn,” Woodend said.

  “Oh yeah?” Finn replied cautiously.

  “I want to know what happened in the dressing room the night before Eddie Barnes died.”

  “Happened?” Finn said, turning away. “What do you mean? Happened? I’ve no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

  Woodend lit up another Capstan Full Strength from the butt of his first. “Somethin’ occurred which distracted everybody’s attention while the murderer re-wired the amp,” he explained.

  “You don’t know that for a fact,” Finn replied, still not looking at him. “It could have been done after we all left.”

  “I’ll tell you something else,” Woodend said, ignoring both the comment and the possibility. “I think that whatever caused the disturbance, it was connected in some way with Hamburg.”

  Even looking at him almost sideways on, the chief inspector could not miss the look of surprise – or maybe even shock – which crossed the young singer’s face.

  “Last time we spoke, didn’t you tell me that you an’ the Knockouts had played in Hamburg, Mr Finn?” Woodend continued.

  “There’s any number of groups from Liverpool who’ve played in Hamburg,” Finn muttered.

  “But how many of those groups were in this club that night?” Woodend countered.

  “Only the Knockouts an’ the Seagulls,” Finn admitted.

  “An’ you’re still denyin’ that anythin’ unusual happened?”

  “Steve Walker had a girl with him on the sofa behind the curtain,” Finn told him.

  If he thinks he can distract me into talkin’ about Steve Walker’s bit of fluff, Woodend told himself, he’s got another think comin’.

  “I know all about the girl,” he said, “an’ I’m not interested in her. Steve Walker’s love-life is nobody’s business but his own. All I want to do is catch myself a murderer.”

  “You’re missin’ the point,” Mickey Finn said.

  “An’ just what point might that be?”

  “You’ve been into the dressin’ room, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’ve seen for yourself how most of the equipment gets stacked up next to the curtain.”

  “Go on.”

  “When one of the lads is ‘on the job’, the rest of us move to the other end of the room, to give him a bit of privacy, like. An’ the last thing we want to do is look towards the curtain. I mean, it’d be a bit embarrassin’ really.”

  The chief inspector nodded. “Spell the rest of it out.”

  “I don’t want to get anybody in trouble,” Mike Finn told him, “but just how difficult do you think it would have been for Steve to slip
his hand through the curtain an’ do whatever he had to?”

  “Let’s review what we have so far,” Woodend said, taking a sip of the pint of best that Rutter had just bought him. “One: Eddie Barnes was a nice quiet lad who only ever went out on the town when that was what Steve Walker wanted him to do. He may, or may not, have had a girlfriend. His mother says she thinks he did, both because of the aftershave and because of the way he’d started actin’, but his best mate is adamant that he didn’t.”

  “And which of them is more likely to know the truth of the matter?” Rutter pondered.

  “Buggered if I know,” Woodend confessed. “Two: the Seagulls – an’ in particular Eddie Barnes – have been the victims of a series of unpleasant jokes, endin’ up with an anonymous letter which was pushed through Jack Towers’ letterbox, a few days after Eddie’s death.”

  “Which could have been pasted together by the killer or might just be the work of a crank,” Rutter pointed out.

  “True,” Woodend agreed. “Three: we have the editor of the Mersey Sound tellin’ me that he’s sure Eddie was plannin’ to leave the group, but he can’t remember where he got the information from. Now that raises a number of questions, doesn’t it? Was he plannin’ to leave the group, an’ if he was, why was he? If he was goin’ to leave, did Steve Walker know about it? An’ if Walker did know, what action would he have been likely to take?”

  “Are you saying that Steve Walker could have killed his best friend?” Rutter asked, astonished.

  “It might sound incredible at first, but when love turns to hate, it’s often the strongest hate of them all,” Woodend said. “Anyroad, let’s follow this thought through. Steve Walker finds out Eddie Barnes is goin’ to leave without tellin’ him, an’ he sees it as the worst kind of betrayal. He decides that Eddie will have to pay the maximum price for his treachery.”

  “He’ll have to die.”

  “Exactly. An’ because Steve Walker’s got a bit of a poetic nature, he decides to kill him on stage. Why not? Eddie’s crime was wantin’ to leave the group – well, he can, but not in the way he intended.”