Rat Poison

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ Carrick said. ‘The wounded passer-by, a woman who works in a restaurant and was on her way home, was found near there, in Southgate, and had been going in the direction of the subway under the railway line. She lives in Wells Road and was walking home. She’s under guard in hospital and is not seriously hurt so I shall talk to her as soon as the medics say I can. That means we have two potential witnesses when I can find the homeless man who spoke to the crew of the area car who arrived first on the scene.’

  ‘And the other innocent person killed?’ I prompted.

  ‘A stage hand at the theatre. He lived in a flat over a shop at Bog Island.’

  This is a sort of roundabout that used to have a public convenience in the middle of it not far from the Orange Grove.

  Carrick added, a hard edge to his voice, ‘His body had been thrown into a skip outside a hotel that’s being renovated, again close to the railway station.’

  ‘So you have three deceased known local-ish hoodlums, plus two missing wounded and two who so far have not been identified,’ Patrick said.

  ‘That’s right. And by local, we mean Bristol. Then there’s the additional two found in Abbey Churchyard who are unknown to us at present. That might be because they’ve never been in trouble before.’

  ‘No means of identification on the bodies?’

  ‘Not on those two. They were the ones who had been mutilated.’

  ‘Are you thinking then they were probably members of the gang trying to move into the area?’

  ‘Yes, I am. And also that the Bristol lot are planning to extend their manor to Bath too. Hence the war. There have been rumours going around for a while along the lines of a London mob joining forces with a Bath outfit to see off a Bristol gang. Nothing concrete, but now it’s happened.’

  ‘Would you like me to run the physical details of these unknown bods through SOCA’s database?’ Patrick offered.

  ‘No, it’s OK. I’m sure I can get all the info I need.’

  When the DCI had eaten we invited him home.

  ‘Lovely to see you, James,’ exclaimed Elspeth, Patrick’s mother. I think she is very much taken with his blond hair and blue eyes. ‘Are you staying for coffee or is Patrick planning to cart you off and ply you with whisky?’

  He shook his head. ‘Thank you, Mrs Gillard but no, I dare not drink alcohol as I have to keep my head on my shoulders for tomorrow. Coffee would be most welcome, though.’

  ‘Is it local intelligence you might be after?’ John queried when we had all settled in the main living room of the rectory to give everyone more room.

  ‘You might be able to help me in connection with one of the deaths last night, sir.’

  ‘Adam Trelonic?’

  The DCI’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘The village grapevine’s hot with it,’ John said. ‘But my assistance has to be limited as I didn’t know the man personally – he never came to church.’

  ‘Does his wife?’

  ‘Yes, sometimes.’

  ‘What does the grapevine have to say about him?’

  The rector hesitated, then said, ‘I gather that he was a bad sort and tried to make up for his lack of wits by being a foul-mouthed bully. This is information given to me by people I know and respect, not gossip.’

  ‘The sort of man then who might have been involved in serious organized crime?’

  ‘Possibly, but I should imagine only as some kind of paid bruiser. But as I said, I hardly knew the man. I have an idea we bought logs off him a few times. He’d do that during the winter months and odd jobs for people during the rest of the year.’

  Elspeth said, ‘It’s been rumoured that he did work for people, eyed up their houses and sold any interesting information to cronies who were in the burglary business, especially if the householders were old, frail and had some nice antiques.’

  ‘That is gossip,’ her husband remonstrated.

  ‘But a couple of houses where he’d worked were broken into,’ she insisted.

  ‘There’s no proof he was connected with it though, my dear.’

  ‘It’s nevertheless a good idea for me to keep it in mind,’ Carrick observed.

  ‘His wife’s a lot younger than him.’ Elspeth went on stubbornly. ‘One of those women who set my teeth on edge.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Carrick asked.

  But she shook her head, refusing to be drawn.

  I knew that Patrick was desperate to get involved with the case but authority in the shape of Commander Greenway decreed otherwise and the one-time member of MI5 dutifully caught an early train for London on Monday morning. What he might do on his weekends off if Carrick needed help – and that proud Scot would need to be even more desperate before he would ask, a little night-time undercover assistance notwithstanding – was another matter. I decided to concentrate on family matters and finishing the proofreading.

  I have often wondered if other writers feel as I do: a kind of loss when they have completed a novel and then drift in a state of limbo even when involved with the editorial aftermath. There is a large full stop at the end of the previous work and any future story merely a few vague ideas floating around in the imagination. What if . . . nothing happens? No ideas. No story. No bloody nothing.

  Horrors.

  It is hard work with such a large family to keep closely in touch with them all even though I’m only involved part-time with SOCA and usually at home, writing, for weeks on end. Carrie is only directly responsible for the three youngest children so I have to ensure that Matthew and Katie are well looked after and do not feel out of things and here, of course, their grandparents are invaluable.

  ‘Those two seem to spend a lot of time rummaging around the district and don’t seem prepared to tell you what they’re up to,’ Elspeth said that same Monday morning when they had left to catch the school bus. ‘I get a bit worried when children become secretive.’

  ‘They have a mystery-solving enterprise,’ I told her. ‘Perhaps it’s in connection with that.’

  A successful one too. Not all that long ago they traced a fly-tipper by carefully going through rubbish dumped in a lane and found the same name and address, someone local, on several old letters and junk mail. This resulted in their uncle taking it all back and leaving it on the culprit’s doorstep with a terse note, adding some other stuff, tyres and bits of carpet, he had found in the vicinity for good measure. At around the same time they had taken the registration of a car and noted the description of the driver who had parked at the top of the village on several occasions and appeared to be undertaking covert surveillance. This had had a direct bearing on something we had been working on for SOCA at the time. There were other ‘cases’, I gathered, in the pipeline.

  ‘You might need to have a word with them,’ Elspeth persevered. ‘They could be up to something that’ll get them into trouble.’

  ‘You’re really concerned then.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  I knew Elspeth also disapproved of the time Matthew spent with his beloved computer, thinking he ought to be out in the fresh air more, and was inclined to agree with her. But this time I thought she was worrying about nothing.

  TWO

  If DS Lynn Outhwaite, Carrick’s assistant, had not shortly afterwards been taken out to dinner to the most highly regarded restaurant in Bath by her boyfriend as a surprise birthday treat, then SOCA might never have become involved in the investigation, or at least, not until things had become very much worse. As it was she recognized another diner, somehow restrained her burning desire to arrest him on the spot and, when she and her boyfriend were leaving, the other party having already departed, produced her warrant card and demanded to know if there were any contact phone numbers. She was given two.

  ‘You even carry your warrant card in your evening bag?’ asked her boss the next morning, in receipt of the information.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Lynn, petite, dark-haired and clever, replied.

  ‘And if I say some
thing like “Attagirl!” right now I suppose I’ll be branded non-politically correct and sexist.’

  ‘No, not at all, sir. As long as it’s OK for me to say, “Attabloke!” when you do something that shows initiative.’

  ‘She’s a real star,’ Carrick said fervently, relaying this conversation to us a few days later, a Saturday morning, when we met in the street in Bath. ‘And she saw – if she’s right, and why shouldn’t she be? – one of the most serious organized criminals in Britain, the man the London criminal underworld refers to with the blackest of humour as “Uncle”.’

  ‘I know of him,’ Patrick mused. ‘They’re right, he’s far from avuncular, more the murdering bastard.’

  I said, ‘So was this just a weekend trip for him or is he controlling the gang trying to move into the area?’

  ‘You can be sure that it’s my first priority to find that out,’ Carrick answered. ‘Lynn did absolutely the right thing in not trying to arrest him or call for assistance. He was with several other people who will now be of extreme interest to me as well.’

  ‘Did she recognize any of them too?’

  ‘Yes, there was a local bad boy by the name of Charlie Gill; at least, that’s one of the identities he’s been known to use. Another was a Cardiff-based mobster who once killed a girlfriend he thought was cheating on him by mowing her down with his car, and there was a woman whose name escapes me for the moment who has more convictions for soliciting and being drunk and disorderly than you’d believe possible. She was with a man with red hair who I don’t recognize from Lynn’s description. The other member of the party was the woman with Uncle and until I find out who she is I’m going to refer to her as Auntie.’

  ‘What about the contact phone numbers?’ Patrick enquired.

  ‘Phoney. Lynn’s furious, saying she wished she’d grabbed him, until I told her that she would probably be on a mortuary table right now if she’d tried.’

  ‘So you’re working weekends because of all this?’ Patrick enquired casually.

  ‘At the moment,’ the DCI replied shortly, adding: ‘It’s not the only case ongoing. You’re obviously not.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t happen very often. I’m probably going to be sent up to Manchester next week. Someone we investigated at MI5 has retired from trying to blackmail MPs and gone into extortion and money laundering for drug dealers instead.’

  ‘And Greenway’s hoping that when he catches sight of you again he’ll head straight back to the hills?’ Carrick said with a big smile.

  ‘No, when we locate him this time we’re going to heave him straight back in the slammer.’

  Meanwhile, SOCA, in receipt of an official request from someone at Avon and Somerset Police HQ, a new man who Carrick had never heard of, sent me to liaise between the Met and his team on what had become known, hardly surprisingly, as the Bath Turf War Case.

  This had not happened before as, officially, Patrick and I work together. But the job up north was mostly routine and involved, initially, his investigating the present whereabouts of known contacts of the person in question that MI5 still had on file. Gaining access to this information was not difficult as Patrick’s old boss at D12, Richard Daws, was now inhabiting the rarefied air at the summit of SOCA, and it was for this reason and the former’s familiarity with the past cases that he was being sent to Manchester. It was not thought that he would be there for very long.

  Patrick, on hearing of my new assignment, was not happy for at least two reasons.

  ‘Look, I shall just be on the end of phones and computers collating information,’ I told him, endeavouring to deal with one of his reservations. ‘Not packing hardware at stake-outs and other wildly exciting things that cops love doing. Besides which, it’ll mean I can keep my finger on the pulse of events at home.’

  Grimly, as he does not like it if we are on duty apart either, my husband left even earlier than normal on Monday morning, taking the car as I did not really need it in the short term. He had made me promise that I would contact him, immediately, if I became embroiled in anything with which I could not cope. Slightly shaken by his apparent conviction that this would happen, I took the short-barrelled Smith and Wesson that he had never returned to MI5 from the wall safe pronto, loaded it and put it in my handbag. Most of my bags, even the Gucci one, smell of gun oil.

  I settled into a routine of spending the mornings at Bath’s Manvers Street police station where I was given a cubbyhole with a desk in it just off the general office. A DI Black from Bristol came and went and I liaised with him as he knew about the Bristol-based mobsters. Together with Black, Carrick invited me to attend all briefings, whether they were pertinent to the case I was working on or not, which was kind of him although I had an idea he secretly hoped I would come up with a Big Idea breakthrough. Sadly, this did not happen.

  As Carrick had said, most available resources were being allocated to the shootings. As was normal in such serious cases one wall of the general office, deliberately kept bare for this specific purpose, was host to maps, diagrams, information that had been gleaned, including photographs, where available, of the dead – those known to have taken part in the ‘war’ and their victims. Where these people had fallen was marked on a large and detailed map of the city centre. Also, arrows marked the assumed, assisted by the homeless man’s brief account, movement through the streets of the skirmish and the murders which followed afterwards. This man had so far not been traced.

  A week went by during which slow progress, mostly of the eliminating from enquiries variety, was made. Then the woman in hospital had a setback to her recovery and had to undergo more surgery which meant that she could still not be interviewed. I knew that Carrick was extremely frustrated by this as he had been hoping she would be able to give him valuable information.

  Regular communications with Manchester had been established. Patrick seemed to have got his teeth into what he was working on, fuelled, I was sure, by his extreme distaste of the man he was investigating, who had a nasty penchant for drug-fuelled violence. There was no point in his coming home at weekends as he was working Saturdays to get the job done quickly.

  Then DS Lynn Outhwaite went horse riding on a day’s leave, fell off and broke her right leg in two places.

  I was first made aware of this when Carrick marched past where I was working – it was just after nine thirty in the morning – and slammed into the large room, the general office, next door. He emerged almost immediately, went back the way he had come, having given me the merest of glances on the way by, and then reappeared framed in the entrance to where I was working.

  ‘It’s a complete disaster!’ he declared, having given me the news. ‘She can’t work with her leg in plaster even if she hadn’t hurt her face as well and suffered a black eye and grazes.’

  ‘Is she still in hospital?’ I asked.

  ‘No, at home, or at least, at her mother’s.’

  ‘You have that address?’

  He seemed a bit thrown by the question. ‘Yes . . . of course.’

  ‘Flowers then. Shall I organize them for you?’

  ‘Er – yes . . . please.’

  ‘Who will take over her job?’

  ‘There isn’t anyone spare or with the seniority. Some of the team are going flat out on other stuff. But I might be able to get someone on loan from HQ in a couple of days’ time.’

  ‘Then I could give you a hand until it happens – that’s if you want me to.’

  Never one to rush headlong into decisions, he thought about it for a few moments. ‘I’d have to get the OK from Greenway.’

  So would I.

  I decided, after this had been immediately forthcoming – the commander seemed really keen so perhaps was hoping for some kind of inside intelligence, although I could not imagine what – that my change of role represented demotion so I would have to watch what I said, especially in front of others. Carrick, to his credit, made no comment on the matter. As far as the Smith and Wesson was concerned I re
garded that as part of the package he was getting.

  The DCI was still trying to establish the identities of the remaining two out of the five men who had been shot and killed during the gun battle, not the pair who had been found mutilated, also still unidentified. One theory regarding these latter two was that they might have been illegal immigrants and, as Carrick had already surmised, part of the ‘invading’ gang, hence the horrible retribution.

  ‘So who won?’ I asked when we were on our way, in Carrick’s car, to an address in Southdown St Peter, the village locally regarded by everyone who did not live there as being the home of all iniquity, past, present and no doubt future. ‘If this Uncle character was in a five-star restaurant was he celebrating victory?’

  ‘He might have been if most of the dead were on the opposing side. Lynn said there was plenty of champagne drunk. If so you almost have to admire the man’s nerve.’

  ‘You still don’t have any evidence that he’s involved, though.’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Am I correct in guessing that we’re on our way to visit the Huggins clan?’

  ‘We are,’ Carrick agreed succinctly. ‘They might just know something about this Trelonic character.’

  I was wondering if a little backup might be required when he added, ‘We went in with a search warrant yesterday and took the whole place apart, picking up two of the lads on account of finding half a shedful of stolen property. It pays to turn the place over occasionally, especially when there’s been a robbery. They’re all as thick as two short planks and haven’t quite worked out that to keep the stuff at home, even for just one night, is a very bad idea.’

  ‘I met some of these people not so long ago – Patrick and I helped you arrest them.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the antiques job. That was Carlton Huggins and two of his sons, Ricky and Riley. They’re still on remand. Yesterday I pulled in Darrell and Shane, Carlton’s brothers. That leaves sundry weans and womenfolk – common-law wives, hangers-on, girlfriends, call them what you will – and Clem, Carlton’s youngest son who will have probably bunked off school, again, and will see the inside of a young offenders’ establishment soon if he doesn’t change his ways. It’s inevitable.’