by J M Gregson
He took out his keys and selected the key to the cleaners’ room which he’d had cut three weeks ago. There was only one full-time cleaner, and she’d been glad to lend him her key for an hour for ten pounds. Hafeez had made sure that the bright new one which he now slid into the lock had been cut for him in half that time. The cleaner wouldn’t split on him. She was rather in awe of him, and in any case she had far more to lose if her action was revealed.
There was never anyone in this room in the evenings. Hafeez installed himself in a chair by the window. There were all sorts of ways in which having a key to this room might be useful to him in the future. For now, this was sufficient. There was a small window that looked out on to the tennis courts; this was the nearest point in the clubhouse to them and you were within five yards of the wire fencing that surrounded the playing area and prevented balls from being lost. A point of vantage, where, if you positioned yourself sensibly, you could see without being seen. Seven o’clock on this bright summer evening was a good time to do this, Younis decided.
The women playing doubles were in their twenties, he decided after a few minutes of keen observation. They had very short white skirts and small, tight white pants beneath them. He was slightly below the level of the courts here: ideal for his purpose. He furiously cleaned the small pane of glass that was so vital to him when the women were at the net. They had tops without sleeves and he thought that one of them wasn’t wearing a bra. But it was the lower end that interested him more. He’d scarcely seen more than an ankle when he was growing up, and the sight of racing calves and thighs and the glimpses of what lay above them still excited him, even after all the sexual experience he’d enjoyed over the last few years. He’d had girls recently, very young girls; their youth and their innocence had been most exhilarating. But he was keeping a low profile in that area, for the present.
It was much safer to interest yourself in the goods being displayed for you here. They were harlots, these English women, flashing their assets about for all to see. Arsets, more like. They didn’t give a damn and they deserved whatever might happen to them, if they were going to flash their arses about like that for all to see. Well, for him to see, anyway. It gave him a thrill, as it always had, to know that they were unaware of his presence, that he was watching the movements of their flesh without them knowing it.
He had an erection now. The women had changed ends and there were new delights for him to see, new but equally brief pants. They didn’t care as they stooped to pick up the balls at the back of the court, didn’t even bend their knees in a show of modesty against prying eyes. Strumpets, they were, prancing about like that! But, then, only his dark eyes were prying, and they knew nothing about that.
He had a meeting in the middle of Brunton at eight. He must tear himself away from these erotic delights. He checked the sharp creases in the trousers of his expensive lightweight blue suit before he left the cleaners’ room. No one saw him closing the door quietly behind him. The women were leaving the court as he came out of the club. They recognized the slim, good-looking Asian, though none of them had played with him, and called a cheerful greeting to him.
‘Good evening, ladies!’ he answered cheerfully as he passed them and moved towards his BMW. They had spoken with him enthusiastically, he thought. He sat for a moment behind the wheel of the big car before he started the engine. Shameless harlots. Deserved everything that was coming to them.
Peach knew from the first moment that he wasn’t going to get anywhere.
He also knew that he had to play things exactly by the book. Jason Fitton was a man who knew all the rules, had expert and highly expensive lawyers, and would delight in turning the tables on him if given the slightest opportunity. None of these thoughts improved the DCI’s spirits or temper.
Nor did the fact that an innocent pensioner who’d been badly injured was going to be unavenged. ‘Daniel Grayson had a night in intensive care. He is still under close observation in hospital.’
Fitton leaned back on the upright chair, contriving to look at ease in a setting designed to make him feel exactly the opposite. He smiled at the round face beneath the shining bald head, well aware of the man’s irritation. ‘I’m sorry about that, Chief Inspector Peach. One is always distressed to hear of another’s misfortune. Who is this man?’
‘He was the manager of the betting shop in Darwen who was brutally assaulted by your gorillas. I say “was” because I don’t think he’ll ever work again.’
‘That is sad – his situation, I mean. I don’t know what you mean by my “gorillas” and I utterly deny any connection with the injury inflicted on this unfortunate man.’ Jason sat back again after delivering these words, even tipped his chair for a moment on to its back legs to show how relaxed and unthreatened he felt. He looked with distaste around the interview room, with its sage green walls and lack of windows. ‘I came here out of my sense of civic duty, because you asked me to do that. I’m beginning to regret the public-spiritedness that brought me to this place.’
Percy Peach regretted this meeting also. Fitton was only here because you had to go through the diplomatic motions. If, as a result of some later and greater crime, Fitton was brought to justice, this violent assault might come home to roost for him. It would be important in that event that he was not able to say, ‘Well, why did no one speak to me at the time about this incident, if you thought I had any connection with it?’ You wasted your time now to cover yourself against hypothetical and frankly unlikely future events.
He stared hard at Jason Fitton’s smug face, trying not to reveal that he knew this was a contest he was going to lose. ‘It will add to your sentence eventually, Mr Fitton. When we arrest you and see you convicted of even greater and even more vicious crimes, this one will be added to the account.’
Fitton let a few long seconds elapse before he deigned to reply. When you held all the important cards and your opponent was playing a duff hand, it was a good tactic to take your time and enjoy his discomfort. If an enemy lost his cool, he often did stupid things – like overplaying a duff hand. ‘I think you had better be very careful about what you say here. I’m a fair man and a patient man, Chief Inspector. That’s why I shouldn’t like you to be accused of defamation of character.’
DS Northcott, who had said nothing so far whilst his leader silently seethed, now spoke as evenly as he could. ‘The investigations in Rochdale and Rotherham have thrown up interesting information about other towns, including Brunton. There are a lot of people involved in the large-scale procurement of underage girls for the use of Asian and British middle-aged men.’
‘I think you should leave this subject before you wander seriously out of your depth, DS Northcott.’
But for the first time Fitton had been a little disturbed. They had seen it in the momentary flutter of his eyelids. Northcott said, ‘Names were mentioned. Yours was one of them, Mr Fitton. Enquiries are ongoing.’
Jason put his hands on the square table, pushed his chair back a little, prepared to rise. ‘I do not have to stay here and listen to this.’
Peach was back in charge with even a hint of retreat in his adversary. ‘Indeed you don’t, Mr Fitton. Not today. Not even this week or this month. Perhaps not even this year. But the time will come.’
‘I’ve had enough of this!’ Fitton pushed himself up, but sank back when he could not rise elegantly. In this place, clumsiness seemed to him a confession of weakness.
‘And when that time comes, your gorillas will turn into rats. Rats deserting a sinking ship. They’ll be only too happy to put the blame on you for this and as many other crimes as they can, as they try to save their own miserable skins. I’ve seen it happen many times before.’
‘I don’t have to listen to this!’ Fitton levered himself to his feet at last, stood staring down at Peach and Northcott. But he had listened, and the words would sing unwelcome in his head as he addressed himself to sleep that night.
It was Peach now who was unhurried as h
e stood up and said with formal irony, ‘Thank you for coming in to the station to help us with our enquiries, Mr Fitton. I am unable say that the assistance you have given us is much appreciated.’
Fitton paused at the door of the small, square, claustrophobic room, trying to recover his normal smoothness and control. ‘I expect I shall be seeing you in a different and more agreeable context, Mr Northcott, now that you have been accepted as a member at Birch Fields. Perhaps we might enjoy a game there together in the near future, Clyde.’
Long after he was gone, his use of Northcott’s forename rang in the air like an insult.
Arthur Swarbrick’s wife was not an optimist. She saw no cause for brightness in a glass half-full. The probability was that whatever was left in the glass was flat and needed to be thrown away.
She had reminded her husband throughout a successful business career of the people who were dangerous to him and she had been mainly right in her assessments. Or at least she claimed that she had been mainly right: like many people of her persuasion, she quoted her successes and conveniently forgot examples of when she had been wrong.
Shirley Swarbrick’s sour view of life had been inhibited for a little while by her husband’s retirement. They had given him a good party, an excellent meal and a cheerful send-off from the works where he had been MD. Shirley had been able to claim to him that all this was due to her steady efforts to warn him over the years against people who represented threats to his well-being. But then he was suddenly at home with her, in the house that she had had to herself for so many years, and despite her dire warnings about his advancing age, his health seemed good and his body much better for his age than she would have expected.
She insisted on giving him the sparse diet she had adopted for herself at home, and religiously administered his five-a-day ration of fruit and vegetables as though it was medicine that he must not miss. But she knew he ate and drank what he wanted when he was away from her, as he was increasingly, as a result of his chairman’s duties at the tennis club. He ate the wrong things and he drank far too much, she told him repeatedly. Arthur nodded resignedly and ignored her cheerfully.
He was a typical man, she said. Their differing philosophies meant that she regarded that as a condemnation and he took it as a compliment.
Shirley decided quickly that there were compensations in the way the tennis club took over from his business in the proportion of the working day it occupied for Arthur Swarbrick. It meant that as his wife she could begin to warn him about situations and people there, very much as she had done when he was at work. He told her repeatedly that Birch Fields was a sports club not a factory, but that affected her attitude not one jot. ‘You’ll need to watch that Olive Crawshaw,’ she told him with a tightening of her lips. ‘She’s not your type at all. She’ll fill the places with blacks and yellows if she gets half a chance.’
Shirley was even more racist than Arthur, and as she spoke mainly within her own home, she had not learned to bridle her language as he had. ‘You mustn’t say things like that, love. They’ll get you into trouble,’ Arthur told her, knowing that she was not going to heed him. ‘We have to move with the times, you know. Things aren’t as they were when we were children.’
‘More’s the pity!’ said Shirley darkly.
‘You can’t hold up progress, dear.’
‘Progress!’ She spat the word as if it were an obscenity. ‘They’ll take over your precious tennis club if you let them, just as they’re taking over everything else.’ Shirley didn’t play tennis any more herself, but she was a social member of the club and used its facilities. This enabled her to observe the changing scene at Birch Fields and offer her pronouncements upon it. She regarded herself as the all-seeing spectator and informed commentator, the power behind the throne occupied by her husband.
‘We accepted our first black man on Wednesday night,’ said Arthur dolefully.
‘Well, there you are, then,’ said his wife, nodding her head at this triumphant conclusion to her argument.
‘He’s a policeman,’ said Arthur, watching her closely from the corner of his eye. This could confuse her; she always said they should support the police as the last bastions of law and order and the representatives of righteousness in a decadent world.
Shirley frowned hard and said nothing for a few minutes. Then she muttered darkly, ‘You can’t rely on anything now-adays, can you? You watch your back, Arthur; that’s all I’m saying.’ She shook her expensively coiffured head. ‘Other people don’t think like you any more. They’ll have you out as chairman if you give them half a chance. You just watch your back!’
‘Do you really think so?’ She had Arthur’s full attention now, whereas previously he’d been half amused by her racist ramblings and thinking of other things. Perhaps, as she sat and drank her morning coffee and took her afternoon tea in the club lounge, she’d heard things that people wouldn’t have voiced with him around.
Shirley was well aware that he was listening to her properly now. ‘You need to watch that Fitton bloke, for all that he’s white and British and educated. You know what he did to our daughter. And he’ll have your job if you give him half a chance.’
He was surprised to hear it from her, but she was voicing one of his own deepest fears. Fitton was personable and educated, and he had money. It was an unwritten rule between him and Shirley that they didn’t speak any more about the business with their daughter; they had an obscure feeling that it would make things worse if they spoke of it. But now she was confirming his fears that Jason would charm the members and slide into control if Arthur didn’t take steps to avoid it. The man in charge had certain advantages, though. He’d better use them whilst he could.
His wife was into her conversational stride now. ‘And there’s that Asian bloke who always walks around in posh suits. Don’t know his name. Don’t want to.’
Arthur thought for a moment. ‘Do you mean Younis Hafeez? He’s keeping a low profile at the moment. There’s a rumour that he was involved in the procurement of young girls for sex. The racket that people have been sent down for in other places.’
‘Well, there you are, then.’ Shirley delivered her favourite aphorism.
‘But it’s only a rumour and there’s probably nothing in it. Don’t you go voicing it around the club!’ Arthur was suddenly full of apprehension. That good-looking, friendly Asian probably had a vicious side if you annoyed him.
Shirley Swarbrick nodded several times. ‘You just watch your back down there, that’s all!’
Arthur wished she didn’t sound so much like an Old Testament prophet.
FIVE
Robert Walmsley was the managing director of Fitton Metals. That sounded a prestigious post. It had been exactly that at one time and on paper it still was. Robert was one of the few people who realized that he was much less important than he once had been.
Bob Walmsley had joined the firm thirty-seven years ago as a junior accountant and had worked his way upwards steadily. His efforts had been much appreciated and well rewarded by the founder of the firm, Derek Fitton. It had been Bob Walmsley who pointed out the potential offered by the steeply rising prices of scrap metal, and the opportunities that new technology was beginning to offer for the reclamation and re-use of various metals that would formerly have been mere scrap. There had been a splendid ten years when Fitton Metals had paid scrap prices and sold the re-treated products for handsome sums. It had grown from a small unit in a despised industry into the most prosperous firm in Brunton.
The man with his finger on the profit pulse had been Walmsley. Derek Fitton was a shrewd businessman who saw the national picture and knew how to strike a bargain with the industrial moguls he encountered. But it had been Walmsley who supplied him with the technical details and the forecasts of future prices which fixed the detail in the contracts he closed. Fourteen years ago, Derek Fitton had made Bob managing director, allotted him a considerable shareholding and told him that he was confident he was leaving
the firm in safe hands when he retired.
Jason Fitton, Derek’s son and successor as owner, had seemed a good employer during his first year. Bob Walmsley had told himself that he mustn’t be too conservative; a certain amount of change was probably a good thing. You needed to be careful not to become too set in your ways. An infusion of new blood and new ideas might be just what the firm needed at this stage in its development. Jason was a personable and well-educated young man, who made a good impression on most of the staff with whom he came into contact.
But there weren’t many members of staff, and as the years passed there were fewer still. Walmsley was the first man who was shrewd enough to realize that the firm was being allowed to freewheel. That was a polite word for it. Things got worse as the years passed; in his view, Fitton Metals was now being allowed to stagnate.
Bob heard rumours from elsewhere in the town and picked up the occasional fact that was more damning than rumour. The firm he had developed and grown to love was now being used as a respectable front for other and much darker enterprises. When he raised that thought with Jason Fitton, he was told in no uncertain terms that if he knew what was good for him, he would keep his mouth firmly shut.
Walmsley was clear-sighted about the facts of his situation. His shareholding wasn’t worth as much as he might have hoped, but he had a lucrative salary and he hadn’t too many years to go to retirement now. He wouldn’t easily get another job if he lost this one: Fitton would see to that, even if redundancy in his fifties wasn’t enough of a handicap in itself. As for the other and more emotional reasons he had to hate Fitton, they were surely irrelevant to the needs of the business and should be set aside from his judgements.
