SALFORD MURDERS: The Private Investigator Gus Keane Trilogy

by Bud Craig

  “Yeah?”

  “I can’t say too much,” she said, tapping the side of her nose.

  I couldn’t help asking myself if this air of intrigue was a large part of the attraction.

  “Everything’s so perfect when we’re together,” she went on.

  “But?”

  “Yes, there’s always a but, isn’t there? He’s planning to leave his wife but it’s difficult…”

  “Difficult,” I said, wondering if I had kept the cynicism out of my voice.

  “Yes. You see the thing is he’s too caring for his own good.”

  I asked myself if this bloke would ever leave his wife.

  “He doesn’t want to hurt her.”

  Was this the old, old story of the man who was always about to leave his wife? If he were so caring would he be shagging another woman?

  “And when he does finally tell her, he wants to do it at the right time and in the right way.”

  That translated in my mind as ‘never’.

  “So it all has to be timed very carefully if it’s going to work out.”

  “I see.”

  “He wouldn’t want her to find out just by chance.”

  I bet he wouldn’t. I wondered once again about Pam. It was obvious from the first day I met her she was going to be a high flyer. Despite being the youngest member of the course she was destined to leave the rest of us far behind. She had always talked a good game and had an uncanny knack of impressing the right people. Most of all she wanted success and thought she had a right to it. Now she was behaving like a love-struck teenager. What a contrast with her professional image. I thought of the disastrous men she’d attached herself to over the years.

  “One day…one day we’ll be together, I know it.”

  I watched her pick at her food. The obsession with her weight was partly about attracting a bloke, whatever she said to the contrary. It spoke of an uncertainty that wasn’t allowed to show itself in her working life. Pam had summed up one reason I would never have had an affair even if I’d wanted to. I just couldn’t be arsed.

  Later, with a kind of reluctant inevitability, we talked about Bill’s death. It was Pam who raised the subject.

  “I’m only just beginning to realise how much it’s affected people.”

  I nodded. She drank more water before she spoke again.

  “There’s going to be an investigation into how it happened, you know.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, with all the safety measures we have in place, you know, doors you can only open if you know the security number, a service user shouldn’t be able to get in like Askey did.”

  “I don’t see what good an investigation would do. I can tell you how it happened.”

  “I know,” she said, “but…”

  She shrugged.

  “And asking Ania about it would only make her feel even more guilty. The poor lass feels bad enough as it is.”

  She nodded.

  “I know how she feels, Gus. You know what a load of crap we have to put up with in this job.”

  “Only too well.”

  Ten minutes later we settled the bill and left.

  “We’ll have to do it again soon,” I said, as we went outside.

  “Yeah, you can update me on your love life.”

  I grinned, knowing full well Pam would need no excuse to update me on hers. She’d’ve probably moved onto someone else by then.

  * * *

  “What’s up with you?” I said as I stepped into Bill’s old office the next day, looking for Don.

  I closed the door gently behind me and went over to Karen, who looked up reluctantly from her seat behind the desk. Tears streamed down her cheeks, onto her chin. She looked up briefly but carried on crying. I went over to the desk and sat opposite her.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Oh, you know…Bill and…every bloody thing.”

  She wrapped her arms around her chest. She had aged since I’d last seen her. Even her hair looked duller. Most surprising of all, though, she looked as if she had put on weight. Comfort eating perhaps, I thought. At the same time she had a neglected look, as though she had given up looking after herself.

  “I came here to get out of the way,” she said after wiping tears away from her chin. “I knew Don was out.”

  “Right. Maybe you shouldn’t have come back to work.”

  “There’s no maybe about it. Not even back half a day and I’m in bits.”

  “Right. Lunch.” I announced authoritively.

  “It’s only 11.30,” she said, looking at the clock on the wall.

  “Irrelevant,” I said. “I’ve pretty well finished for the day. I don’t suppose you’ll achieve anything useful.”

  I took a pen off Don’s desk and tore a sheet of paper from a notebook. As I wrote Don a note, Karen shook her head, sniffing and wiping her face with the back of her left hand. She got up and picked up her handbag from the top of a filing cabinet and followed me out into the team room. I grabbed my briefcase from my desk and went over to the white board on the far wall. I wrote ‘not back’ next to my name in red felt tip; ‘lunch back 1.30’ against Karen’s.

  “Just give me a couple of minutes to wash my face,” Karen asked.

  She met me in reception ten minutes later, freshly made-up, obviously having added a splash of perfume.

  “Let’s go to my place,” she said, “give the neighbours something to talk about.

  As we drove down Trafford Road in Karen’s car, she seemed to snap out of her mood to some extent.

  “I’m only working out my notice, you know,” she said.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Yeah. I’ll explain when we get home.”

  We covered the few miles to Prestwich saying very little.

  “It’s nice of you to come to my rescue, Gus,” said Karen later, filling two cups with tea from an old-fashioned brown pot.

  “Knight in shining armour, me,” I said from the dining room of her posh semi. I looked round the room, almost a parody of good taste, having the antiseptic air of an operating theatre. She put the pot down on the table between us.

  “I’ve got to talk to someone or I’ll go mad.”

  I could see a small back garden through the window. The shaven lawn and carefully tended flowerbeds matched the neatness of the house. On the table she had laid out hummus, cheese, salad, ham and slices of French bread.

  I lifted the mug to my lips and drank. She handed me a plate.

  “Right. What’s bothering you?”

  She sipped her tea.

  “Help yourself,” she said, waving towards the food.

  I spread hummus on a piece of bread and began to eat.

  “It’s about Bill,” Karen said after another drink. “I just can’t go on as if nothing has happened.”

  “It’s affected all of us,” I said.

  I had decided to plead ignorance about the money Bill had left and her affair. I couldn’t see her being too happy to know I’d been talking to Jean about her. She drank quickly, topping up her mug again.

  “No, no, you don’t understand,” said Karen, shaking her head emphatically. “I loved him.”

  I glanced at the wedding photos on a Welsh dresser and wondered if Gary knew the truth about Copelaw. If not, how would Karen explain the money?

  “Oh,” I said.

  Karen looked down as if examining the contents of her mug.

  “We’d been…lovers for some time.”

  “You had an affair?”

  “It wasn’t an affair,” said Karen insistently. “We were planning to set up home together.”

  “So it was serious,” I asked, trying to keep the disbelief out of my voice. “Bill was going to leave Jean?”

  She looked up and nodded her head.

  “He didn’t want to hurt her, but…”

  Where had I heard that before? She stifled a sob.

  “We were starting to look at all the practical stu
ff: finding a house, getting a mortgage.”

  I sipped more tea. Karen picked up a piece of cheese and made a half-hearted attempt to eat it. She let out a sigh, attempted a smile, tried to speak then hesitated.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said finally.

  “I thought Gary was…” I began.

  Shut up, you silly sod, I told myself, it can’t be Gary’s. Bill should have used those condoms I found on the office floor.

  “Bill and I had talked about having children together and we weren’t always too careful.”

  Obviously, I almost said.

  “I wasn’t on the pill and you can’t always be bothered with condoms, can you?”

  She looked down at her hands.

  “It would have been brilliant, Gus,” she went on, looking across the table at me. “Living with Bill and expecting his baby.”

  She looked down and laid her hands over her stomach.

  “It doesn’t show yet but it soon will.”

  “Do you want the baby?”

  “Of course I want the baby!”

  Anger flared up then subsided.

  “You know how much I longed to be a mother. And it’s all I have left of Bill.”

  I thought of the messes people got into. I still couldn’t quite believe that I had joined the club whose members had a broken marriage on their CV. Not me, not solid, reliable Gus Keane. The one everybody brought their troubles to.

  “It’s just as well I am pregnant,” she said, sipping more tea. “Otherwise I’d be hitting the booze.”

  She stared into space for a while.

  “Oh, it’s doing my head in, Gus.”

  “Must be.”

  “Sometimes I think I just can’t handle it.”

  “Does Gary know?”

  “No. I’m going to have to tell him soon. Poor Gary, it’s not really his fault.”

  She drank more tea and sat back.

  “I’m thinking of going to stay with a friend until I can get myself sorted out.”

  She sighed and pushed her hair away from her face.

  “The money will help of course.”

  “Money?”

  I tried to sound as if I knew nothing about it.

  “Bill left me £50,000 in his will.”

  “What?”

  My surprise was genuine. Fifty thousand! ‘A lot of money’ Jean had said. How right she was.

  “Yes, life insurance.”

  “Quite a surprise.”

  “A sign of how much he loved me.”

  “Did Bill know you were pregnant?”

  She nodded.

  “It had just been confirmed. I think the insurance policy was for the baby too.”

  Karen picked up another piece of cheese and toyed with it before putting it down on her plate.

  “He always wanted more kids, you know. He was so excited.”

  I tried to imagine Bill as a proud father and failed.

  “He was worried about how we’d manage if anything happened to him. You know, with that heart scare he had.”

  Karen pulled herself together almost literally by shaking her body as she sat up and straightened her shoulders. She apologised for getting upset. It seemed confession time was over.

  “Here I am going on about myself when you’ve had problems of your own.”

  “It’s OK.”

  “And then finding Bill like that. It must have been awful.”

  “Yeah. The weirdest part was talking to the police. It didn’t seem real.”

  Once again I was trying to steer the conversation round to the investigation of the murder. I felt sorry for Karen but not all that sorry. She must have known having unprotected sex could lead to pregnancy. It wasn’t her fault Bill had been killed, of course. Unless she killed him.

  “Oh, they talked to me as well.”

  “They probably ask everyone the same thing,” I said. “Did you see anything unusual or suspicious around the time of Bill’s death?”

  “Or anybody hanging about outside,” she added, “or someone in the building who shouldn’t have been there.”

  “Had you seen anything?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “You know as well as I do that at that time on a Friday, there’s virtually nobody around. You were getting ready to go out on a late visit, I remember.”

  She looked into space as if trying to remember something.

  “Don was around somewhere, but that was about it. Gary got to the office by about twenty to five or so. We were in the car on the way home by quarter to.”

  “That’s the funny thing, Karen,” I said. “It was just an ordinary day.”

  She looked me in the eye.

  “Except it wasn’t.”

  * *.*

  Later, as I walked home after Karen had dropped me off, I mulled over what she had said. As far as Bill’s murder was concerned, I was no further forward. The amount of money he had left her was more than I had thought. And she had stressed the seriousness of their relationship. But there was more. I had a feeling she had said something new and significant. At some point during our conversation a word had come into my mind briefly. Then just as suddenly it was gone. It was the nearest I had come to recalling that word that was like ‘certainty’.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Hello,” I said into the office phone, as I sat at my desk the next morning.

  “Is that Gus Keane?” said a hesitant voice.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Gary here.”

  Gary, Gary, who the hell was Gary? I pondered the name as I made my way to my desk. I scratched my head. It was a common enough name but I was buggered if I knew anyone called Gary. So why was he ringing me?

  “Gary Davidson.”

  Oh, that Gary. Still none the wiser, I sat down and switched on my computer. With my memory the way it had been lately I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking who he was. It could be somebody I’d known for years. I sat down.

  “What can I do for you Gary?” I asked.

  Suitably neutral, I thought.

  “Will you be in the office for the next half hour?”

  I looked at the computer screen and clicked open an e-mail.

  “Yes, but…”

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  “What’s it about?”

  Silence greeted this perfectly reasonable question. Presumably he was on his way. Where was this leading to, I thought as I checked my messages. Two minutes later reception rang through to say Mr Davidson was here to see me as promised.

  As a tall, skinny man was shown into the interview room, a vague recollection of having met him before filtered into my mind. I didn’t think I knew him well though. His jacket looked too big for him. He was like a fifteen-year-old in his first suit at a family wedding. Something told me he wouldn’t look right no matter what he wore. After a murmured greeting, Gary hovered as if asking for permission to sit down. I gestured towards the chair opposite me. He looked at it as if wondering what it was.

  “A bit of a rough area, this,” he said as his bum finally made contact with the chair.

  “My dad always says there’s no rough areas, only rough people,” I replied. If there’s one thing that gets my goat it’s people slagging off the place of my birth.

  “Yes, but…”

  “You might come across one or two working class types though,” I added.

  “It’s not that I’m a snob, you understand.”

  “Heaven forbid, Gary,” I said.

  “It’s just that I’ve never really been happy about Karen working here.”

  Karen? Davidson, of course. Gary was Karen’s husband. That still didn’t explain why he was going out of his way to talk to me. I waited a while but he didn’t say any more. There was a diffidence about him, an air of apologising for his own existence that was paradoxically quite powerful. Gary looked around warily as if afraid of being interrupted in some shameful activity. His manner was alread
y beginning to irritate me. He took a deep breath and I noticed a slight tremor in his right hand.

  “I understand you were at my house yesterday,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “No doubt you’re wondering how I knew?”

  “Not really, Gary, no.”

  There was no reason why Karen shouldn’t have told him.

  “My next door neighbour mentioned it,” he went on. “A nice old dear is Betty.”

  “Everybody needs good neighbours,” I said.

  “It’s nice to know somebody has my best interests at heart,” he said, missing the irony by a mile.

  I rested my chin on my left hand while he went on with his tale.

  “Once she described you it was obvious who she was talking about. The broken nose is a bit of a give-away.”

  I looked ostentatiously at my watch and scratched my eyebrow.

  “Listen, Gary,” I said, “you look as if you’re on your way to work and I’m pretty busy. So if you could just say what you want to say, please.”

  “Right. OK.”

  He folded his arms like a schoolboy.

  “Karen told me last night she was leaving me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that but don’t see…”

  “Sorry!”

  The flash of anger stopped me in my tracks.

  “Like you care,” he sneered. “You’ve had your fun. As soon as she tells you she’s pregnant you don’t want to know.”

  “What?”

  He clenched his teeth.

  “I’d been pretty certain for a while she was having an affair. Even now she hasn’t told me the man’s name.”

  I shook my head.

  “Gary, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I went home with Karen because she needed someone to talk to. I haven’t had an affair with Karen. I don’t knock around with married women.”

  He banged the desk with his fist. Even that gesture of aggression failed to impress.

  “You might at least have the decency to admit it now you’ve been found out.”

  Why should I have to put up with this first thing in the morning? Or at any time, come to that? I sighed and met Gary’s eye.

  “I couldn’t have got Karen pregnant. I can’t get anyone pregnant.”

  “What?”

  Oh, God, I said to myself, now he’ll think I’ve got the same problem as him. I’d better make it a bit clearer.

  “I had a vasectomy about twenty-five years ago.”