by Oliver Tidy
An agreement existed between the DI and Sammy that if Romney was clearly not on duty, as could be determined by his clothing, then Sammy would drop the Inspector for plain Mr Romney. Romney enjoyed being one of the crowd at times as much as anyone else.
‘Morning, Mr Romney,’ said Sammy, turning to find Romney at the counter.
‘Morning, Sammy. How’re things?’
‘Can’t grumble. Times are hard everywhere. Another shop boarded up in the precinct this week, I see. Usual?’
‘Please, and a mug of tea.’
‘Take a seat. I’ll bring it over to you.’
Romney looked up into Sammy’s blank features before depositing his money on the counter. Sammy offering to bring over anything usually meant he had something that he wanted to impart to the DI.
Romney found a table, picked up a newspaper and waited. He overheard the big man arranging for someone to take over his position at the counter, and in a minute he was over with two mugs of tea. He squeezed himself into the static furniture opposite the policeman with some effort as Romney folded the paper away.
‘I do believe that I might have to start a diet, Mr Romney.’
This brought a hint of a smile to Romney’s lips. For as long as he could remember Sammy had been talking about dieting.
‘Nasty business that young girl taking a header into the car park the other day.’
‘Indeed it was,’ said Romney, wondering what Sammy could have to offer regarding that.
‘She worked up at that garage got done over this week didn’t she?’ Romney nodded and sipped his tea. ‘Girlfriend of that worthless shit, Avery?’
‘That’s right,’ said Romney. ‘What’s on your mind, Sammy?’
Sammy Coker leaned forward on his elbows and dropping his voice said, ‘Couple of fellas in here the day before yesterday. From the way they were talking I got the impression they’d spent the night at Her Majesty’s pleasure over that business at The Castle.’
‘And?’
‘They weren’t as discreet as perhaps they should have been. I overheard them talking about their statements. Seems that they might not have been completely honest about all those present or the times they were there. I couldn’t catch it all.’
‘Any names specifically?’
‘Avery’s cropped up. Seemed pretty pleased with themselves. Sounded like they earned well out of it.’
Romney’s blood coursed more freely through his veins. ‘Would you recognise them again?’
‘Take a look for yourself if you like. I kept the film from the camera.’ Sammy pointed up to the CCTV camera he had installed on the advice of his local crime prevention officer.
Romney smiled at the café man. ‘Thank you, Sammy. I’d like that very much.’
Romney enjoyed his breakfast all the more knowing that he might have a life-line for the case. If he could identify the men on the tape – find them and bring them in – he might be able to apply pressure that would make one of them own up to providing a false witness statement.
The information got him wondering again about the why? Why would they have done that? The answer had to be to do with Avery’s movements that night – the night Claire Stamp had fallen to her death. And again, Romney found himself wondering why Avery would have pushed Stamp off the balcony. His policeman’s logic reduced the possibilities to two: either he had accidentally killed the girl in a domestic argument and had sought to cover it up by throwing her off the balcony, or he had deliberately killed her to shut her up about something. The result was the same: a dead body.
As arranged with Sammy, after Romney had finished his breakfast he left the café without another word to the big man, wandered around to the back entrance and up the fire escape to the flat above. This is where Sammy lived and where he kept the recording equipment for the CCTV in the café below.
‘I’d appreciate it if you kept my involvement out of this, Mr Romney,’ said Sammy. He met the DI’s look with a sad one of his own. ‘He’s a nasty bastard is Avery. Word is he’s branching out into drugs. We don’t need any more of that kind of thing in Dover. Dover’s got its problems – always has had – part of its charm for me, I suppose, but drugs needs stamping on. They always target the young, Mr Romney. The young and the vulnerable.’
Something in Romney’s memory was jogged. He had a vague recollection that a young relative of Sammy’s had become mixed up with drugs a few years back. He couldn’t remember how it had ended and didn’t like to ask. It rarely ended well.
Romney gratefully accepted the video tape. ‘Don’t worry, Sammy. And thanks for this. It’s much appreciated. Pity there aren’t more people in Dover who think like you.’
Sammy inclined his head at the compliment and then saw the DI out.
With the video tape tucked safely in the inside pocket of his coat, and his stomach full of the great British fry-up, Romney decided to prolong and further encourage his improving humour by sticking to his original plan for the morning.
In spite of his predictions, the sun had not lost another battle to cloud cover and, as if sensing a rare opportunity for the season, shone warmly down on the high street to lift the spirits of those scurrying about making the best of it.
*
A high street of charity shops, one or all of which might contain a good book-find, evoked the same feelings of excitement and anticipation in Romney that he got from breakthroughs in his police detective work.
For Romney there were certain similarities between the detecting of books and being a crime detective. Each required a working knowledge and thorough understanding of the subject matter. With books it was condition, edition, author and title. With police work it was the law and the evidence. Each required the painstaking application of the knowledge and understanding. Several times in the history of his book collecting Romney had been rewarded for trawling conscientiously through boxes in back rooms, or the bottom untidy shelf of a rambling second hand book shop, giving his focussed attention to each volume that came into his hands. Likewise, often it was the same dogged style of pursuit to uncover the truth by ferreting out and minutely examining evidence and testimonies that would lead to the job’s rewards.
Backing up all this expertise and application was that sixth-sense, that gut feeling he would get when confronted with a room full of books, or a crime scene, that there was something there to be found, something waiting to be discovered, understood and celebrated.
He mooched in and out of Scope, The British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Relate. The unmistakeable smells of musty fabric, old women’s perfume and nursing home odours assailed his nostrils. Far from being repulsed by such scents, as many who he knew would happily attest to, Romney drank them in for what they represented to him: little commercial enclaves of goodness, good intentions and goodwill – islands of affordable opportunity dotting cut-throat seas of commerce.
He picked up a couple of hardbacks that were too well preserved to ignore for the pound each that was being asked for them. In Help the Aged he flushed with pleasure to find a first edition of an early Reginald Hill in very good condition complete with unclipped dust-jacket and reasonably priced. The Red Cross had his heart thumping for a copy of A Severed Head, but closer inspection revealed that the jacket, like so many leads in criminal cases, was a red herring, and the edition was a later book club reprint. By the time he had been through the Pilgrims Hospice, the Cats Protection and Shelter he had a carrier bag of items that contributed to a vast improvement in his mood from the early morning.
Finding himself not far from the station, where he’d parked his car, he decided to deposit the books in his vehicle and use the station’s television and video equipment to check out the video that Sammy Coker had given him. In the station car park he was surprised to see Marsh’s car. He felt the bonnet. It was warm.
*
Marsh was sitting at her desk. She looked as surprised to see her DI as he was to see her.
‘What are you doing
here on your day off, Sergeant?’ said Romney, striding towards the television equipment.
‘Just popped in to collect something, sir.’
‘Couldn’t it wait?’
‘It could. I couldn’t. I didn’t expect to see you here either.’
‘No, me neither up until breakfast.’
He told her about the tape and what it might mean for the Claire Stamp investigation. Then he wheeled out the television and video stand, plugged them in and turned them on. He inserted the tape that Sammy had given him and Marsh came around to watch it with him. Sammy had considerately stopped the tape to show the two men. It was a good angle on their faces as they stood at the counter ordering.
‘Know either of them, sir?’ asked Marsh.
‘No. I’ll get the sergeant who was on duty that night to have a look.’ He ejected the tape and locked it in his desk drawer. ‘What are you doing with yourself this afternoon?’
‘Nothing much. Might mooch about the shops for a bit.’
‘Pah, that’s overrated. Fancy a quick drink round at The Castle?’
‘The Castle? Isn’t that the place that Avery and his Neanderthals took a dislike to the other night?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Sir, why do you want to go there?’
‘I’m thirsty and I fancy a change, that’s all. You coming or not?’
*
The Castle was a grand name for a dingy sprawling public house with a personality disorder. Most of the time it knew what it was and behaved accordingly. However, on certain nights of the week its alter-ego took over and it believed itself to be a trendy club. The metamorphosis, under cover of darkness and with carefully calculated lighting and its backdrop of the real spot-lit castle perched high on the hill above it was effective enough to lure in the uninitiated and the less discerning. But in the unsympathetic light of day its pretensions seemed an almost comical leap of the imagination. The Cinderella may have been more apt.
The pub nestled in an oxbow of land at the foot of the steep meandering ribbon of tarmac that led to the real castle which dominated views, minds and guide books of the area. It had originally been constructed as a defence installation countless years ago to complement the other fortifications of the town. Early in the twentieth century the town had sold it off to an entrepreneur. It had undergone the change from mini-fortress to public house.
Made from local ragstone under a Kent-peg tiled roof with gothic arched stone windows, it had sat slowly deteriorating for decades up until a couple of years before when the tide of asylum seekers from the Balkans had washed up a Kosovan businessman. He fell in love with the potential, the history and the idea of the place. He had the vision, the money and a mysterious influence that enabled him to purchase and alter the building. When it was finished and opened it quickly became a popular hotspot of Dover nightlife. Then the businessman mysteriously disappeared to be replaced by a cartel of his countrymen.
Since then The Castle had begun its moralistic and aesthetic slide downwards to what it essentially was today: a shabby drinking hole for the ethnic minorities and a widely recognised den of iniquity.
It had been raided many times over the last few years with mixed results. And yet it still proved – bewilderingly to Romney – an entertainment magnet for certain elements of the indigenous youth population on ‘club’ nights. To Romney’s mind this was as much a sad reflection of what else was available for the thrill seeking Dover adolescents as anything to do with the place’s charm.
In the time that it took Romney to make the short drive from the station to the car park of The Castle the skies that had remained bright for the morning succumbed to the creeping blanket of grey cloud cover that was becoming a permanent feature of the weather. Looking up Romney thought that the rain wouldn’t be far behind.
This was most definitely not somewhere that Romney would normally take a woman for a drink, but, as a Detective Sergeant, Marsh hardly qualified as a woman.
Marsh took a table under the appraising, lecherous stares and accompanying stony silence of the handful of customers – all male – who were patronising the place and had turned as one to see what the wind had blown in. Romney ordered soft drinks at the bar from an apparent mute. The undisguised hostility that infused the air let Romney know he was at best unwelcome, at worst remembered.
Romney had been part of a raid to arrest an individual who had taken refuge in The Castle the year before – an individual whose disordered mind had led him to believe that he might claim some sort of sanctuary in the place. The fore-sight of the officer in charge of the operation to provide a free ride to the station for more than one had been rewarded as things hadn’t gone quite as smoothly as could have been hoped. The recently settled ethnic minorities tended to display a musketeer attitude in the face of authority when one of their own was the focus of detention: all for one and sod the consequences.
They sat and sipped and chatted for a minute before Romney saw reflected in Marsh’s face the approach of someone to their table. Romney turned to look up into the dark-skinned unshaven face of a man whom he recognised. It appeared that recognition was mutual.
‘Policeman,’ said the man. ‘What do you want?’
‘Would you believe a quiet drink?’
‘In here? No.’ He was a heavyweight with facial scars to suggest that he fancied himself with his fists but wasn’t as good as he thought. Just below his hairline was evidence of recent mending.
‘Who are you?’ said Romney.
‘The landlord. What do you want?’
‘I can see why you’re nearly empty if you give all your customers this welcome.’
‘Some of our customers are very welcome, Mr Policeman. Others are not.’
‘Well, Mr Landlord. I was hoping to find out what the other night was all about.’
The landlord’s brow knitted. The query seemed to surprise him. ‘The other night?’
‘The brawl in here’
‘You have our statements. Why don’t you read them?’
‘Because they will only tell me what happened not why it happened.’ The man towering over Romney pondered this. ‘Look,’ said Romney, ‘you wouldn’t sit down, I suppose, would you? I’m getting a crick in my neck. Just a couple of quick questions and we’ll drink up and be on our way. Or,’ he said turning to Marsh, ‘we could spend a couple of hours in here, couldn’t we? Maybe invite some of the lads from the station for a drink when they knock off. That should be good for business.’
With a deep sigh the man perched on a stool at their table.
‘That’s better,’ said Romney. ‘So, why don’t you tell me why a bunch of thick-skulled local thugs came calling with violent intent?’
‘What’s it to you?’ said the man, although his tone was now inquisitive rather than hostile. ‘You lot don’t usually care what happens to us.’
‘I’m interested in who was here and why? Not your lot, theirs.’
The man appraised Romney for a long moment. ‘This isn’t about that night is it?’
‘Yes and no,’ said Romney, truthfully.
The man appeared to be giving co-operation some thought. He said, ‘At the time we had no idea what it was about. We’ve had our differences in the past, but we’ve kept out of each other’s way for a while. This town is big enough for both of us. They came in about an hour before closing. I wasn’t expecting trouble so there was always a chance that they were here for just a drink. Maybe a bit of intimidation. They weren’t noisy or aggressive. It was almost like they were waiting for something.’
‘Or someone?’ said Romney.
‘Or someone,’ said the man.
‘Why didn’t you show them the door if they’re not welcome here?’
‘There were too many of them and not enough of us.’
‘There were a lot of you arrested.’
‘A few precautionary phone calls swelled our numbers. Anyway, closing time came. I told them that they’d have to drink up and lea
ve and that’s when I knew that they were going to be trouble.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I know the signs,’ said the man, simply.
‘You said you didn’t know at the time what it was about.’
‘I heard afterwards. They were blaming us – one of us – for a rape. The rape at the petrol station. When I say us, I’m talking about the immigrant population as a whole. That’s the thinking of these scum. Someone wrongs them and they don’t go looking for the someone, they find an easy target and take it out on whoever they can get their hands on. And they call us animals.’
‘Did you know any of them?’
‘I recognised a face or two and I won’t forget them.’ Romney ignored the implication. ‘But your lot arrested them all. You must know who was here.’
Romney said, ‘Yes, we know who was here, but that’s not enough. I have a conflict over timings that I need to clear up.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said the man.
Romney thought for a moment, experimenting with how he could best put what he had to say. In the end he laid a mug shot of Simon Avery on the table between them. ‘Was he here?’ Romney realised that he was holding his breath as the man studied the picture.
Eventually, he said, ‘No. He wasn’t one of them.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Yes. I know him,’ the man replied, neutrally. ‘There were old men in here who got hurt,’ he said. ‘It’s not right.’
Romney said, ‘Have you heard anything about the rape?’
The man grinned widely showing two gold incisors. ‘Do you really think that I’d tell you if I had?’
‘It would be your public duty.’
‘If it was one of our community, he’d be dealt with by our community. Severely.’
Understanding that he’d get nothing else from the man, Romney said, ‘I’m surprised to find you open. I heard they made quite a mess in here.’
‘It’s in our nature to resist oppression,’ said the man, raising his chin proudly.
