Haggard Hawk: A Nathan Hawk Crime Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Crtime Mysteries)

by Douglas Watkinson

  Yes, well, we did have a bit of a do lined up for afterwards, back at The Plough.

  A proper funeral caught my eye, not fifty yards away from us. A large family was burying a cherished relative, someone who mattered to them. You could tell by the way they stood, propping each other up, bent towards each other in a hive of distress over the grave, white handkerchiefs rising to faces from the pockets of dark clothes. Real tears. Real grief. Folk there because it was important.

  A well-cared for woman in her fifties stood apart from them. She wore a black scarf over her head tied under her chin, like a peasant. Only peasants don't carry Gucci handbags. A late arrival, perhaps, unwilling to break the mood at the graveside. She turned and caught my eye. I looked away, back at our charade.

  Behind Julie stood Stefan and Bella, she with her arm through his. Stef had found a dark suit from somewhere which was pinching him in the groin and round the stomach. But then so was mine. I tried to see Bella in the way Will Waterman had described her yesterday, made easier now by the long black coat, the black veiled hat. All very Donna Corleone, very Mafiosa, but I could still only see ... Bella. Beautiful, yes. Until she opened her mouth.

  As for the thing Will had seen, apart from snippets of their sex life, it was still on my mind. Big drugs or little drugs? You couldn't tell with Stefan. He smiled a lot, spoke softly and cleaned a decent window but that was really all I knew about him. Except that he was clever. When clever men conspire to do evil, an old boss of mine used to say, the rest of us are in trouble.

  Talking of clever, Allan and Petra had also turned up which didn't surprise me. They had guilt written all over their clever faces. They stood at the back of the proceedings, beside Charnley and Faraday. They in turn stood convivially with three or four old lags from Grendon.

  I must have missed Reg's switch to Revelations but caught up with him at: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain...”

  I thought yes, mate, okay for you to talk, you didn't have a wife like mine. There was a pause in the ceremony, a silence. I thought Reg, in his hurry to get off home, had lost his place. All eyes had turned to me, forcing me to realise that I hadn't just thought the thought, I'd voiced it. I stepped back with a mumbled apology, Laura stepped back with me.

  Odd how your mind can roam over things like who killed Jim Ryder, is Stefan Merriman a drug dealer and who's the well-cared for woman in the neighbouring party, all to suppress what's really on your mind. In my case the funeral I'd been to two years, three months and sixteen days ago...

  She had moved. The well-cared for lady had come to within ten yards of us. She was either a funeral groupie or had turned up late and, asking for directions at the gate, had been directed to the neighbouring ceremony, not ours. Ours was the one she clearly wanted. She hovered close to us, trying not to be part of the proceedings while at the same time anxious to witness them. She had a hankie up to her face and was dabbing her eyes. I nudged Laura.

  “Who's that woman?” I asked, in a whisper. “Do you know her?”

  Laura looked at her, narrowed her eyes. “Left my glasses in the car.”

  “I didn't know you wore them.”

  “I try not to.”

  “This puts an entirely different perspective on our relationship.”

  “What relationship is that?” she mouthed.

  “The one you could easily see, if only you'd brought your glasses.”

  She pinched my arm. John Faraday must have seen me ask Laura who the well-cared lady for was.

  “That's Stella Taplin, guvnor,” he said, as we walked away from the graveside, five minutes later. “Wife of Jim Ryder's old boss, Freddie. I expect she's come with a load of readymix concrete to bed Jim down with. You coming back to The Plough?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  From the way he nodded, slow and away from me, I got the feeling he wished I wasn't.

  At the traffic lights on the Aylesbury Road, next to the Technical College, I pulled up at a red light and Laura put a hand on my arm.

  “You alright?” she asked. “Maggie and all that?”

  I nodded. “Guilt, I suppose. She was buried too. I've never been back.”

  “Maybe you have better ways of remembering her.”

  A car pulled up beside us, signalling right. The lady driver's hair, halfway between blond and brown, caught my eye. Mouse, they used to call it, but not the way this lady wore it. A tight mass of ringlets falling in expensive disarray. Too much of a nose, I thought, but the rest of the profile worked a treat.

  “The woman at the funeral?” asked Laura.

  “Stella Taplin,” I said. “Not only does her name begin with S, she was crying, back there in the graveyard.”

  “Nice car, though.”

  She was referring to the brand new, powder blue Jaguar Stella Taplin was driving. Her light went green, she purred off towards Pollicott and all points north. If Jim had stolen two million from Stella's husband, it clearly hadn't left him penniless.

  

  You could hardly have called it a wake since there wasn't really a party atmosphere, no celebration of the man's life. There were drinks and canapés, sure, but more as a warm up to the re-opening of The Plough that evening. Normal business would be resuming at six o'clock, according to Gizzy, and there were twenty three tables booked to prove it.

  “I can see I needn't have worried,” said Julie. We were sitting at the window table, watching Gizzy organise the other girls into serving the drinks and food. “Or do you think I haven't worried enough?”

  “Can't have it both ways,” I said. “If she'd let the place go, you'd be spitting feathers. She's made a fist of it, you don't like that either.”

  She raised her eyebrows at Laura. “Men,” she said, with a Julie smile. “They'll believe anything if the arse is cute enough.”

  If the remark had come from somebody who hadn't been shot in the back two weeks earlier, and her husband murdered, I'd have taken exception to it. Tom and Gizzy hadn't exactly re-styled the entire pub in Julie's absence, Jesus Christ they hadn't had time. The place had always had a nice mixture of the traditional and the minimal and Gizzy had just beefed that impression up a little. Plenty of tat on the walls - pictures, prints, horse brasses - bare minimum on the tables. In the restaurant she'd hung a series of black and white photos from the 1920s, urchins standing outside local factories, looking forlorn and historical. She'd given the tables unity, she claimed, by the addition of austere vases, each with a single rose in them. Hardly a thorough makeover.

  “I like it,” said Laura, the peacemaker. “But then I always liked it.”

  Julie frowned. “Then tell me this. She's twice as bright as our Tommy, so what's her game if it isn't gold mining?”

  She beckoned to one of the girls and took a glass of wine from her tray.

  “Nice to see you, Mrs. Ryder,” said the girl, timidly.

  “Thank you, Marcia. You too.”

  Laura and I took drinks and the girl moved on. Laura tried to neutralise the conversation.

  “When are you coming home, Julie?” she asked.

  “Friday, Doctor Rickson says. I've never been one for the NHS but they've done me proud. I'm even down for free trauma counselling...”

  “What's that when it's at home?” asked Elvis, barging into the conversation with his usual finesse. He collapsed heavily into a nearby chair and sledged it up to our table.

  “It means I need help to stop jumping six feet in the air, every time I hear a bang,” she told him. “Or when I think of Jack Langan. What was all that about?”

  “Accident,” said Elvis, before I could open my mouth. “Silly bugger, changing the drive belt on his saw, slipped and fell on it. Hey presto! A double dose, as they say.” He added an ill-considered prophesy: “Carry on at this rate, we'll soon have a village full of widows. You and I'll be laughing, Nathan.”

  He chuckled and
slurped the head off his beer.

  “Elvis, you're wanted,” I said.

  He looked round. “Where, mate?”

  “Anywhere but here. Fuck off!”

  He looked at me, baffled, expecting an explanation as to how he'd offended. I gave him a fixed glare that said refer to my last instruction. He rose and departed, shaking his head.

  “Same old Uncle Elvis,” said Julie.

  “Is that really his name?” asked Laura.

  Julie shook her head. “So called because of the hair-style. It used to be jet black.”

  “His name's Billy,” I said. “Billy Leonard. And he should've been shot years ago.”

  We looked round the bar. People were congratulating Tom on the food he'd prepared. He'd changed into his chef's whites when he got back from the cemetery and looked like the Tom I knew. The beanpole kid who, in a strong enough breeze, might fold in half. Gizzy was still in her black, looking ten years his senior and bossing him and the girls in fine style. Maybe Julie had a point. Why had Gizzy latched onto Tom? Thinking about it brought back his words to me, the day I'd seen him by the river with Stef. He'd said there were things he wanted to talk to me about. Private stuff. Him and Gizzy stuff. Not the obvious but the not obvious...

  “I guess it's why she hasn't shown up today,” said Julie. We looked at her. “Jean Langan, I mean.”

  “Understandable,” I said.

  “Oh, no criticism of her. Poor cow's got enough on her plate.”

  “Nathan doesn't think Jack's death was an accident,” Laura said and, at Julie's request, she went on to explain why. When she'd finished I said:

  “How's your memory, Julie?”

  She smiled, the polite smile I'd seen her give customers she wasn't sure of.

  “It's better than the last time you saw me.”

  “How many people, up there on The Ridge?”

  “Two.”

  “I know you didn't see faces but did you recognise voices, smells, clothes?”

  She smiled. “You're beginning to sound like a policeman, Nathan. Voices? Well, I'm not sure one of them wasn't Irish. Belfast as opposed to nice Irish.”

  “Did you tell the police that?”

  “Of course.”

  “And did you and Jim have any ... outstanding problems?”

  “Have we upset anyone recently, you mean? I certainly haven't, I can't speak for Jim. Anyway, Charnley reckons these two young men he's holding...”

  “How about things between yourselves?”

  Julie smiled at Laura, laying a safe bet in her mind that she'd told me about the Prozac. “You mean people still keep secrets?”

  In case Laura responded, I said quickly: “I just want to catch whoever tried to kill you, Julie.”

  “I thought that was the police's job.”

  “Have they asked you where the two million pounds went to?”

  I watched her face for signs of uneasiness. There weren't any.

  “They have and I told them I don't know. I know you don't believe it but Jim wasn't capable of stealing it in the first place.”

  She beckoned me to lean towards her, as if she had a confidence to impart, but a gust of laughter over by the bar distracted us. It was the first break in an otherwise sombre morning and came from Charnley and two of the Grendon lags: Charnley had told the joke, they had over-responded to it. Faraday looked as if he'd heard it a million times before.

  One of the girls put a tray of canapés under our noses and we chose from it. She moved on. I reached behind for another glass of the red from Marsha and told myself that Laura hadn't seen.

  Gradually, as the wine ran freer, so the gathering loosened up. Some friends from way back came over to speak to Julie, Laura and I turned away to give them space.

  The black outfit suited her, made her look slimmer for a start. Jacket over a classy top with bunches of silver at her neck and wrists. Huge earrings, like Maggie used to wear. And since an element of comparison had crept in, I wondered how the face looked in the mornings, just after waking up. Better than mine, I reckoned, by about six ravines on the forehead and a couple of gouges down the side of the nose...

  “You look great,” I said, quietly.

  “Thank you.” She obviously couldn't bring herself to lie about my appearance. “How long have you had that suit?”

  “If I were to say twenty years, almost to the day, what would you say?”

  She giggled. “I'd say happy birthday, suit. Is that why you've been knocking back the vino? Celebration?”

  I reached out for her hand and didn't care who saw me.

  “You weren't supposed to notice.”

  I was momentarily distracted by the arrival of a couple I'd seen up at Penman Stables, the twelve year old D.C. Terry Quilter and W.D.C. Jenny Drew. Worth all the others put together, Faraday had said. The pair of them made no approach to Gizzy or Tom, nor to Julie for that matter, but headed straight for their boss, still holding court at the bar. I found that strange. I turned back to Laura and said what I'd been trying to find a moment for all day:

  “I take it you and me are ... alright?”

  “I'm very well, thanks.”

  “You know what I mean. Oxford the other day. Losing my rag with Black and Decker over there.”

  I nodded towards Bailey and McKinnon who were talking to Faraday at the bar. McKinnon had half an eye on me, I knew that. Laura said:

  “My father had anger management disorder, as you call it. We just called it a filthy temper. He could've drunk you under the table any day. I hated him. I hated him as a child and I...”

  She stopped, feeling that she'd spoken disloyally, maybe.

  “At least I've got The Map,” I said.

  “On you?”

  I laughed. “Do you think I'll need it?”

  “You can never tell with A.M.D,” she said, and giggled again. It was a giggle you could live with.

  “You've had quite a bit to drink yourself,” I said. “That's why you haven't been rationing me. How many?”

  “Put it this way. If I try to stand up, it may not happen.”

  The old friends Julie had been speaking to did some watch checking and the bloke mentioned something about a dog being left alone for too long. They promised to keep in touch with Julie, now that this awful business had brought them together again. They kissed her and took their leave. It was the move most people had been waiting for.

  The Wyeths left shortly thereafter and then Bella and Stefan came over to Julie. She thanked him for having propped Tom up over the past fortnight with fishing expeditions and a couple of late night chats. Stefan said it was the least he could have done.

  I smiled at Bella. “Hi! How goes it?”

  She appeared unwilling to admit, in front of a theoretically grieving Julie, that things were okay.

  “Fine,” she whispered.

  There hardly seemed any point in asking her to repeat that in Italian. I beckoned her closer and said:

  “Say something in Italian.”

  She rolled her eyes heavenwards. “Blimey, Nathan, you're as bad as old Will. He's always asking that. What you want me to say?”

  “Anything. Say: “the man over there is a policeman and I don’t trust him.”

  She glanced round. “Why not?”

  “Just say it. Please.”

  “L'uomo là è un poliziotto e non se lo fido di. Fair enough?”

  Whatever Neapolitan magic there might've been in the Italian bit, the “fair enough” killed it.

  Once Stefan and Bella had gone, I went over to John Faraday and managed to separate him from his colleagues. A whole host of things were making him anxious, according to his face. He wouldn't say what they were. He was embarrassed. I didn't need to ask the reason for that. His colleagues. He was sober. I said he should get a few drinks down his neck. He refused.

  “You staying?” he asked, about as casually as a judge passing sentence.

  “Party? I'm first in, last out, mate.”

 
He nodded, looking away at Tom. Somebody was complimenting him on the food.

  “I wanted to ask you something, John. It's nothing to do with all this. It's my neighbour.”

  “Which one?”

  “Stefan Merriman. This'd all have to be off the record, right?”

  He smiled, relaxing for the first time. “Whatever you say, unless he's killed someone.”

  “Is anything known about him?”

  Faraday shrugged. “Couple of things, I believe, both pretty minor. Credit card fraud as a kid and possession, five or six years ago. Cocaine.”

  “No dealing?”

  I knew the look on his face. I'd seen it on coppers a thousand time. Had he overlooked something? Was Stefan the missing link to ... whatever was missing? I tried to make it sound run of the mill.

  “Listen, I’m not saying there's a problem but I wouldn't mind you checking, to see if there's more. If you get a free moment.”

  He turned to where two more coppers had arrived. It seemed odd, the party being nearly over, but they turned out to be Bailey and McKinnon's reliefs. They went over to Julie and asked how the funeral had gone. Like a funeral, she said. Did they want a quick drink before they headed back to The Radcliffe?

  While they knocked back a couple of scotches apiece Julie gathered her stuff together and thanked me again for arranging the funeral. She rose and addressed the hangers on, specifically the police faction, telling them to make the most of the free booze. Next week they'd be paying for it. It was said as much for Gizzy's benefit as anyone else's; she was letting her know that her short reign was about to end. With a pause to look at a few of the black and white urchin photos, and turning her nose up at them, Julie left with her escorts.

  I wasn't happy that Bailey and McKinnon stayed on. It meant that, including them, there were six coppers in the place now. Everyone knows what happens when coppers get glued to a bar. Nothing. For three days. Ten minutes later, when the Grendon faction and a few stragglers had departed, the coppers outnumbered the rest of us. I could see Gizzy anxious to clear the place ready for the evening. Elvis was at the bar and Tom was trying to shift him. I went over to help.