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

by Douglas Watkinson

  A light came on in one of the cottages. Then another and then a third. I spent the next ten minutes explaining how some maniac had tried to overtake me. I was offered tea and sympathy and use of the phone. Someone suggested I call the police. I said I'd drop in at the station when I got to Chesham.

  

  I thought they'd done away with nicks like Chesham but it must have slipped through the net. It was a dead ringer for the first police station I ever worked in. Seppleton, North London. That too was shamelessly Edwardian, with a curved hard wood counter, parquet floors and radiators like organ pipes. From the front door you could see the stone steps down to the cells. They were tellingly well worn and the cells themselves, not visible, were iron barred, dark and forbidding with high grilled windows, open to the elements. When it rained the prisoners got wet, and called up the stairs to the duty room. The duty officer would call back, usually with unhelpful suggestions.

  The Duty Officer at Chesham was a Sergeant who looked as though he'd been sat behind the counter for twenty years without moving. He was close to my age with off-piste white hair either side of a glacial slope running down to a smooth, shiny forehead. Set in the bumpy slush of an overweight face, the eyes were alpine sky blue. They grew alarmingly large, as he looked up at me through powerful reading glasses. He lowered his head slightly, peered over them and they shrank again. I put a slight tremble of exhaustion in my voice.

  “Morning,” I said. “My name is Whitely, I believe you're holding my niece, Giselle.”

  “Among others,” he said, looking me up and down.

  “I left home the moment I got the call. Been driving ever since.”

  “Where from?”

  “Keswick. The Lakes.”

  “Nice place to live, I shouldn't wonder, before the tourists got to it.”

  I nodded. “I wondered if there was any chance of me being able to see her.”

  He still hadn't risen from the chair. He leaned forward, looked me up and down again, then yelled:

  “Becky! In here, please!”

  A W.P.C. came to an adjoining doorway, plastic cup in hand.

  “Sarge?”

  “Go up and ask Miss Whitely if she'd like a visit from her uncle...” He looked at me.

  “Nathan,” I said. “Nathan Whitely.”

  “From her Uncle Nathan. Take a good look at the gentleman, describe him to her first.”

  “But she knows what I look like, Sergeant.”

  I thought it was a nice touch. Innocent. Naive. And it gave him the chance to patronise me.

  “Security from our end, sir. For all I know you could be anyone.”

  I could hardly fail to see his point. When the W.P.C. returned to say that Gizzy would love to see me I was taken to the back entrance of the building and led across the car park to a modern development, the secure female units. The Custody Officer there spoke of them like bed-sits she was trying to let.

  “They were only built last year,” she said. “E.C. specifications, proper facilities, all nicely decorated. Wouldn't mind spending the odd night in one myself. D'you mind if I just check you, Mr. Whitely?”

  I raised my arms and she whisked her hands over me and neither of us felt a thing.

  “Right,” she said. “Your niece is in number five, I'll give you, say, quarter of an hour. Enough?”

  “Plenty. Thanks.”

  Gizzy played the role as written for her. When the Custody Officer showed me into unit number five, she hurried over and flung her arms round me.

  “Uncle Nathan!”

  I held her and shushed her gently. She began to sob. Gizzy making a meal of it, I thought, until I held her at arms length. The tears weren't an act, they were relief, anger and fear rolled into one. I drew her close to me again and winked my thanks at the Custody Officer which gave her an edge of confidence to leave us on our own. She closed the door to within six inches, holding it ajar with a shoe. I saw her shadow on the wall, hunched and monstrous, as she took a chair and planted herself within easy reach.

  I let go of Gizzy and gestured for her to sit at the small table opposite me. I put a finger to my lips.

  “Just the words,” I said, nodding at the shadow. “Soft and low, no temper, no swearing, no Gizzy-isms. Otherwise she'll be in here like a shot.”

  I pushed the box of tissues across the table to her, she took a couple and blew her nose.

  “Why come at three in the morning?” she asked, with a sniffy smile. “Couldn't you sleep?”

  I lowered my voice to a whisper and felt the shadow beyond the door move closer. “No one's going to ring Charnley at this time of day, to check if a man answering my description can visit you. Have you been questioned?”

  She nodded. “Down at Penman Stables. D.C. Drew. She is a real cunning bitch! Tommy was in the other room, I could hear him getting upset and them really winding him up...” I calmed her again, finger on lips. “Where've they taken him, do you know?”

  “Aylesbury. Listen, Gizzy, I don't know if you're mixed up in these killings or not.” She was about to protest, I stopped her. “That's the truth, I don't. But on a scale of probability, you're up at the innocent end and that's mainly my nose at work. I like you, Gizzy. Always have done and we both know that. But I also know the police must've had a reason to pull you in.”

  She put her forearms on the table, rocked back and forth on them in a classic show of distress. “The will. Julie's bloody will, naming Tommy as her sole beneficiary, or whatever it's called. Do they really think we'd be dumb enough to kill her, two weeks after she signed it?”

  “What other reasons did they have?”

  “Tom's fingerprints. They're all over the boot of Julie's car, inside and out. Did I know how they got there, Drew asked me. Of course I bloody knew! He fetches and carries the kitchen stuff, I said, uses Julie's car.” She looked up at me. “Why's it so important?”

  “One of the killers blew the lock off with a shotgun, to get at Julie's bag.”

  That seemed to alarm her, but she kept her voice down.

  “Shotgun? That'll be why they asked me about Tommy and his shooting.”

  “Does he own a gun?”

  “Yes, they took it away days ago.”

  “You mean they came round to the flat and he just handed it over?”

  “Yes, why not?”

  “No, that's good. Nothing to hide. Who asked for it? Who came to the flat?”

  “There were two of them. Terry Quilter was one, he used to go to the same gym as me. The other was called Bailey, I think. Young, dark haired, bit spotty. We told 'em, he's into clay shoots and rabbits and stuff, but not bloody people. Specially not his own flesh and blood!”

  The shadow in the corridor shifted a little. It was a diplomatic warning for us to keep it cool. Gizzy added, sheepishly:

  “Drew, she tried to tie it in with Tom's police record.”

  I took a deep breath and sighed accordingly, sinking down in the chair. Uncomfortable. I think better like that.

  “I'm learning stuff tonight. I didn't know he had a record”

  “Nor did I.” She pursed her lips. If they ever got out of this situation in one piece it would be a sore point between them. “Four years ago, he stole a C.D. player from Comet's, the stupid sod. He took it down off the shelf, according to Drew, ran for the door and legged it across the car park, followed by half a dozen customers. He got to the Fire Station and his asthma caught up with him, he had to stop. So there he was, player in one hand, inhaler in the other, threatening to use it on them. I mean that's his level, right?”

  “I didn't know he had asthma, either.”

  But it was a comforting thing to learn. It meant he could hardly have been the person I chased through The Radcliffe. Nevertheless, I said:

  “You were in Oxford, the day someone had a second go at Julie.” She nodded. “Why didn't you go to see her? You'd been every other day?”

  She shrugged. “We had ticket for Jongleurs, the comedy club.”

/>   I nodded. “Friend of mine saw Tom in Blackwells, looking ... out of place.”

  She smiled at that. “Looking guilty, you mean. When we're in Oxford, he goes there for a flick through the cookery books, pinches a recipe or two. Cheaper than buying the book.”

  I laughed gently, partly to keep the shadow happy. “Tell me something, Gizzy, and I'm not the only one who'd like to know this ... Jean, for example. Why go for a bloke like Tommy?”

  She drummed her fingers on the table for a moment, crisp, sharp and fast.

  “Jean went for a bloke like it. So did my mum. Maybe it runs in the family.” She looked at me, fiercely loyal. “Not that it's anyone's business.”

  “It means the police'll think you're the brains of the outfit.”

  “We're not a bleeding outfit!” she said, too loud.

  I heard the metal chair in the corridor scrape along the floor. I turned to see the bulbous shadow rise and loom towards us. The door opened and the Custody Officer put her head and shoulders round.

  “Everything okay?”

  I was patting Gizzy's hand by now and she'd started to sob. Phoney, this time. I pushed the tissues across to her all the same.

  “We're okay,” I said, with another wink. “You know what it is. Time to reflect and all that...”

  She nodded but didn't go.

  “Five more minutes?” I asked.

  She answered by withdrawing her head, replacing the shoe in its door wedge position. I said:

  “So, police have been round to the flat, in the past week?”

  “They came first of all to tell us that two blokes had been arrested. They kept coming back.”

  “Ah!”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means Charnley's a bit sharper than I gave him credit for. There were certainly two blokes in The Plough, the night of the murder, but the lads they arrested, Jackson and Evans, it wasn't them. They were hauled in as decoys, if you like, to make you drop your guard.”

  Gizzy looked up at me, like a boxer with both hands tied behind her back.

  “It worked?” I said.

  She nodded. “It was that W.P.C. Greene. Remember her?”

  I nodded. “She was with you, the night it happened, baby-sitting.”

  “She came back again, several times. One time - I must have been in the shower or something - she and Tom started talking about the football match that had been on, night of the shooting. I mean it’s straight out of Columbo this and being Tom he fell for it. Did he remember that goal dispute, some bloke being off-side? Tom said he did...”

  She started rocking on her forearms again.

  “And there wasn't a dispute?”

  She shook her head. “We hadn't been watching the match. I mean we'd left the telly on, but...”

  “Where were you?”

  “Round at Kate's.”

  “I thought you two weren't speaking.”

  “Well, that's the point. It was time to make up.” She paused, picked at one of her fingernails. “And things.”

  “What things?”

  “Private. The solicitor said I didn't have to answer.”

  Regardless of the shadow on the wall, I said sharply:

  “Fuck the solicitor! It's a murder they're investigating, Gizzy. Private has gone public, and you lied to them. Why?”

  She took a moment to think, searching her fingernails for inspiration.

  “It was daft, I know, but I thought it would look so bad for us. We wanted to quit working for Julie. We were sick of the arguments, Tom being told he was useless, me being groped by Jim on his weekend leave. We thought Kate might be able to help.”

  “By doing what? Killing Jim?”

  “Don’t be so daft!” she protested. “We wanted to borrow money, to buy our own place. We thought she might know people we could ask, without it getting back to Julie.”

  “What time did you get to Kate's?”

  “Tennish. Tom had the evening off, Julie said I could finish early. She didn't like me hanging around if Jim was in the kitchen.”

  “And he was shot at eleven thirty-five.”

  “I know. They kept asking, over and over, where was I...”

  “Over and over? You mean you haven't told them yet?”

  She looked at me. The eyes said she hadn't.

  “Kate's your one alibi, Gizzy!”

  She was still looking at me, waiting for something to dawn. “Okay, so Kate's disappeared but...”

  That wasn’t it. She was still looking, not a flicker, not a twitch on her face.

  “Oh, Christ,” I said, when the penny finally dropped. “You think maybe she did go after Jim. You're trying to protect her.”

  She nodded. “We left her cottage at eleven,” she whispered. “That gave her thirty-five minutes...”

  For the first time since I'd entered the room my neck muscles let go of my head which flopped a little out of sheer relief.

  “Thirty-five minutes?” I said. “In which to rally two trigger happy friends and get up to The Ridge? Either one of those things would've taken half an hour. Then there's the motor-bike, where did she magic that from?”

  “Stefan has a bike. He's just done it up. Him and Tommy are always messing about with...”

  With spanners, I thought. Somebody had just used one to tighten up my neck again .

  “Right,” I said, as heavily handed as I could in a whisper. “Tomorrow morning, if it ever comes, you tell Rosa Kleb out there you want to see one of Charnley’s mob. Whoever comes – it’ll be one of the girls - you tell them exactly what happened that Friday night.”

  I rose from the table and so did she.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find your sister.”

  I made it sound like a job almost done but part of me still wasn't sure I'd find Kate alive. All very well for us to see her as an avenger, albeit one who had overstepped the mark and done away with Jim Ryder. But what if she turned out to be a victim, just like her uncle?

  -13-

  The girl on the switchboard where Kate Whitely worked was too chirpy by half but then I'd only had three hours sleep.

  “Good morning, this is Turner Wallpaper, my name is Siobhan, how may I help you?”

  “Kate Whitely, please.”

  There was a flicking of pages at the other end, right through the alphabet to W, presumably.

  “I'm afraid I've no one of that name on the list,” said Siobhan.

  “Sorry, that's her maiden name. Try Kate Jamieson.”

  More flicking. No luck. And a measure of suspicion in Siobhan's voice.

  “I don't appear to have that name either.”

  “Right, can you put me through to the Personnel Officer?”

  Siobhan countered: “I think you mean the Human Resources Director.”

  “I know what I mean, but if the Human Resources guy wants a chat, I'll be happy to oblige.”

  “It's a girl,” she said.

  “I'll be even happier.”

  “May I ask who's calling?”

  “Mr. Carter,” I said.

  “Won't keep you a moment.”

  That was a lie, born out by most of Beethoven's Pastoral being pumped down the line while I waited. It was meant to sooth my nerves but didn't. I was thinking about Kate and why Siobhan had never heard of her. Eventually a perky voice said:

  “Good morning. Human Resources, Deirdre McKay speaking.”

  “My name is Carter, I'm a solicitor working on behalf of the Accident Compensation Board. I've been trying to get hold of one of your employees at home, Mrs. Kate Jamieson, or Miss Kate Whitely, as her claim form puts it.”

  “Kate? Yes, I know Kate. She hasn't worked for Turner's for nearly a year.”

  I asked if she was certain about that. She couldn't have been more so. Ever hopeful, I asked: “Where does she work now? Do you know?”

  “I have an address. Studio 5, Blenheim Stalk, Foley Bridge, Oxford.”

  “Thank you.”

/>   I put the phone down and made breakfast.

  Over a second cup of coffee I opened the road atlas and found Stadhampton where the Taplins lived. Most people I know live on the edge of a page, which makes finding their houses difficult enough. The Taplins lived dead centre, right in the fold, underneath a staple. At Ashenham Place, according to the business card Freddie had given me, the day of his assignation with Jean Langan. It was on the way to Oxford. I could nip in to see Stella en route to Kate's new business address.

  It must've been ten o'clock as I drove out of Winchendon and, passing Victoria Cottage, saw John Faraday and Quilter emerging from it, walking towards the former's car. Petra was standing at the front door, watching them go, her face as hard as the meaning of her forename. I slowed down and said to Faraday:

  “How's it going?”

  He turned and pointed at me, lips tight, eyes narrowed.

  “Word,” he said, angrily. “Not here, though.”

  “Pub?” I suggested.

  “It's not that kind of a word. Village Hall, the lay-by.”

  I drove round to Backwater Lane and waited for them to join me.

  The first thing Quilter did, when they pulled up, was to light two Gauloises and give one to Faraday, who paced a short line, back and forth, hyper-ventilating on the cigarette, tapping it every two or three seconds. He stopped suddenly and barked at me:

  “Go on, ask me what we were doing round at Victoria Cottage.”

  I shrugged with open hands, waiting to catch anything he threw at me.

  “Consider it asked.”

  “The Wyeths' car, right? She'd lied to us, day after the shootings. She said it was in to have the exhaust fixed. The same car body shop you spoke to told us she pranged it.”

  “Allan did. He was driving.”

  “Whatever. So, we put this to her, it being a loose end. Our guvnor's a bugger for tying up his loose ends. This matter has been dealt with, says Lady Muck, by Nathan Hawk and your superior.”