by Frank Lean
‘My heart bleeds. He’s inside for two murders.’
‘But he never did those! I thought that if I got you this far you could say your name was Devereaux-Almond and come in with me.’
‘Oh, great! So you don’t just expect me to go prison visiting. I’ve got to impersonate someone else to do it.’
‘They never ask for proof of identity.’
We passed the intersection, still going slowly. Swarms of white vans passed us, then Dutch lorries heading for the ferries at Hull.
‘Does this mean you’re coming?’ Marti asked shyly.
‘It means I’m thinking. You seriously imagine I’ll bluff my way into a prison as this Morton Devereaux-Almond?’
It must have been my day for devilment because there was something about her crazy idea that was appealing. I suppose the truth is that I was bored. Bored with business, bored with the long, empty summer days.
‘It’s easy.’
‘Suppose they check documents?’
‘Oh, they never do. Dad’s only a category C prisoner now and there’s usually a queue a mile long. All we’ll have to do is go to the office and sign in like everyone else. Please . . .’
‘Suppose they decide I look a bit iffy and order a strip search? I don’t fancy some greasy warder shining a light up my nether regions.’
She laughed. The roof stayed on the car.
‘You don’t look iffy. If anything you’re overdressed for visiting.’
‘And you’re not?’
‘I like to give Dad a boost. He says the idea that I’m doing well is all that keeps him sane.’
‘Yes, but he might throw a wobbler. He’ll know I’m not this Devereaux-Almond.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll whisper to him who you are. He’s too quick to give anything away.’
‘Like father, like daughter,’ I muttered, accelerating into the overtaking lane.
Marti’s guess of an hour to reach Armley Jail was an underestimate. The fast overtaking lane was crowded past Bradford, but, having negotiated something called the Armley Gyratory, we were outside the grim Victorian prison by two. We parked the car as close as we could get and joined others making their way to the Bastille.
I got that old sliding sensation in the pit of my stomach again, just like a man starting a solo journey down the Cresta Run on a baking tray. I love it. I love the sensation of setting off and not knowing where, when, or if I’ll ever arrive.
‘This doesn’t mean that I’m going to spend the next few months investigating his case,’ I cautioned as we passed under the gateway.
‘Go on, you’re a fair man. All I ask is that you listen to what Dad has to say. You saved me that day at Tarn, it’s the least you can do.’
‘I don’t quite follow your logic there,’ I said. ‘I’m only going to listen, mind you.’
Things didn’t dovetail as neatly as Marti expected. We were almost at the end of the queue which gave me plenty of time to study the many warning notices. Impersonation of an authorised visitor was listed as an indictable offence right up there with drug smuggling. It was too late to draw back; processing began. Everyone was searched, bags handed in, and gifts sealed for later checking, but there were no strip searches. Male hands were marked with ultra-violet fluid. When we finally reached the office I handed in the visiting order in the name of Devereaux-Almond.
The officer looked at it, checked off the name and then slapped another form in front of me.
‘You’ve not filled in what relation you are to King,’ he said grumpily. An overweight baldy of about fifty-seven, coasting towards retirement, he kept shuffling uneasily on his stool. Piles, I guessed unsympathetically. His shiny, near-translucent skin was dead white except for a multitude of blackheads. I stared at him, perplexed. Long explanations would only land me deeper in the mire.
‘Partner,’ Marti said urgently, ‘Morton’s my partner.’
‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ I whispered when I scribbled the lying word into the relevant box and handed the paper back to the surly screw. He ran narrow, suspicious little eyes over it as if fearing that the paper would turn into a clenched fist and punch him in the mouth, and then led us forward. Without another word he waved us into the queue waiting to be led through the prison. We inched ahead with the throng. Neither of us spoke for a while.
‘Dave?’ Marti said eventually. ‘You don’t mind if I call you Dave, do you? It is your name, isn’t it? I heard that friend of yours.’
‘It’s all right by me.’
‘I wanted to ask you something personal.’
‘Fire away.’
‘Is there something wrong with me? You don’t seem to want to look at me directly.’
‘What?’ I was confused. I felt as embarrassed as a teenager caught poring over a girlie mag by an anxious parent.
‘Yes, I’ve noticed that you glance at my eyes and then away. Is there something on my suit? Pigeon dropping or something?’ She looked down at her front and brushed her fingers over her breasts.
I drew a deep breath. I knew what the answer was but I didn’t like to say anything. Thanks to Janine’s words my eyes must have been avoiding Marti’s physical charms.
Marti threw her head back and laughed, and what a laugh. That terrible gargling sound reverberated off walls that had absorbed ten thousand screams, sighs and moans of despair, but nothing as weird as this. It sounded oddly defiant.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said when her clatter had stopped echoing around the dismal corridors. Women running the WRVS booth craned their heads out of their stall to see the cause of the disturbance. I was surprised that an emergency medical team didn’t arrive to offer assistance. She laid a hand on my arm. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that you look like a startled fawn . . .’
‘God Almighty . . .’ I muttered under my breath. Marti knew how to pick a quarrel.
‘It’s your partner, isn’t it? Janine? I’ve read her stuff in the paper. She’s terribly down on men. A real ballbreaker, I should guess.’
‘You guess wrong.’
‘Listen, she’s got nothing to worry about. After marriage to Charlie Carlyle, any other man . . . Well, let’s just say that train, the libido express, pulled out and left me on the platform and it’ll be a hell of a while before there’s another connection.’
‘Kind of you to set me straight, but giving you a lift to Leeds wasn’t intended as a proposal of marriage.’
‘Now you’re sulking.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Oh, really?’ she said coyly. ‘I hope I haven’t upset you. I know how easily hurt some of you big boys are. Poor Charlie! I could put him off his Quaker Oats for weeks with the wrong word.’
‘I bet you could, but I’m not Charlie.’
‘No. ‘Course you aren’t. I should think it needs something really heavy duty to put a dent in your ego.’ Then she started laughing again. ‘I could get to like you, you know.’
‘I’ll wait in the car if you prefer,’ I offered.
‘Don’t be such a lemon, Dave! A single girl’s got to get her fun somewhere.’
I was about to tell her that I could now see why Charlie had been trying so hard to alter her appearance at Tarn Golf Club but I didn’t get the opportunity. Another glum warder clinked his keys, opened the door of the visitors’ room and beckoned us forward.
‘I’m sorry, Dave,’ Marti said, linking my arm, ‘but being in this place makes me feel giddy. You have to have a laugh or you’d start tearing your hair out.’
‘Forget it,’ I mumbled. For me the effect was deadening.
9
THE ROOM WAS crowded. A dull roar rose as the away team greeted the boarders. Dozens of tables with attached chairs were occupied by earnest little groups all talking fifty to the dozen like a bookmakers’ convention. A lot of the prisoners seemed to be in their early twenties, or even younger. Mums and dads and teenage girlfriends were haranguing shaven-headed youths. Older, sadder women clutching infants were talking to th
eir imprisoned mates, poring over photos of absent pals.
‘He’s over there,’ Marti whispered, gripping my arm tightly.
You certainly couldn’t miss King. He was years older than almost everyone else, but he was different in another way. He was calmly scanning the room, completely at his ease, a distinguished figure, aristocratic even. Only the Day-Glo bib he was wearing marked him as a prisoner, and on him it looked like a badge of rank. We picked our way through the crowded room towards him and he spotted us when we were halfway there.
I don’t know what it was, exactly, but as we went through that assembly of disappointed people I felt my spirits lifting. I wasn’t about to burst into song, but after the gloomy wait in the corridor outside and the po-faced screws it was a relief to find that the man we’d come to see was a human being and not a monster. At least to outward appearances he was.
A slight person, he rose to meet us. His hair was grey, artfully combed from the side to conceal an almost bald scalp. His expression was as benign as a Japanese Buddha. The eyes gazing out from the rather pinched face were completely inscrutable. The nose was sharp and prominent, his chin less so – firm, finely modelled, but not a major feature. His lips were thin, close pressed and anaemic, but smiling now. He didn’t look much like Marti except for those luminous, intent eyes. They were the same shade of green as hers. For the rest I’d have to say there was something meticulous about him, an air of control. His green cord trousers were neatly pressed, brown leather shoes polished; the feet tiny and dainty as a young girl’s. Unlike most of the others he was wearing a shirt, a cotton check. Had he been dressed in an expensive suit, you could have taken this former safe-cracker for a scientist, a professor of quantum mechanics or maybe a surgeon. His hands were very well cared for: no self-administered tattoos for Vince King, no layer of grime under the nails.
Taking his eyes off Marti, he shot me a keen look, neither friendly nor unfriendly, but knowing. I might have been there to spring him for all he knew, but he gave no sign.
‘Marti!’ he said warmly, kissing her. ‘I can tell you’re coming a mile off. That laugh, it’s not getting any better, is it?’
Marti responded by giving a demonstration of her vocal gymnastics. Heads turned in our direction.
King hugged Marti and patted her as if checking that she was real. The noise she was generating gradually died away. I could see her lips moving as she whispered an explanation. I thought I caught the word ‘partner’. Eventually Marti broke away and sat down.
Turning to me, King shook my hand, or rather he tried to crush it. For a small man he was strong. As he tried to squeeze the blood out of my fingers, I countered with a crusher of my own.
‘Lovely!’ he said, pulling his hand free and shaking his fingers in the air. ‘Marti, it looks like you might have got yourself a real man at last. I don’t know who the hell you are, mate, but you’re no solicitor. Shaking hands with one of them is like trying to milk a dead cow.’
‘Dad, don’t get the wrong idea. Dave is only doing me a favour by bringing me here.’
‘Go on!’ he said, slapping my shoulder like a buyer in a cattle auction. ‘You could go further and fare worse than this chap now you’re shot of Carlyle. You’re not wed or anything, are you, lad?’
I shrugged my shoulders to signify nothing in particular and sat down under the vigilant gaze of two officers and any number of CCTV cameras.
‘Christ!’ King continued. ‘You’re not quite as broad across the shoulders as the Millennium Dome, but you’re not far off. Gordon Bennett! With shoulders like yours I could have ripped them safes out and worked on them at home.’
‘Dad, you’re embarrassing Dave. I hardly know him.’
‘She likes big hunks, you know,’ King bantered.
‘Leave it, Dad. Dave’s easily upset.’
‘He doesn’t look it! This lad knows how to take a bit of fun. That Charlie Carlyle’s a real lamp-post of a fella. The trouble is someone forgot to switch his bloody light on.’
‘Charlie’s not thick!’
‘He must be if he wants to give my little girl the bum’s rush.’
‘Dad, I’m not here to talk about me and Charlie. We’ve got our differences but to be fair the fault’s not all on one side.’
‘Hark at the High Court judge,’ he said to me with a chuckle. He smiled at me, giving me the chance to inspect all his teeth. They were clean, white and even. The smile didn’t make him any easier to read. His eyes remained as blank as an unmarked grave.
‘If you’d let me get a word in edgeways, I was going to tell you that Dave’s a detective. The reason I brought him here is to listen to your story. He might be able to help you.’
King was now listening to Marti with a curious intensity.
‘Detective,’ he snarled. ‘He’s not a bloody copper, is he?’
‘He’s private, Dad . . .’
‘What if I was a copper?’ I said. King was in here for two cold-blooded murders, not vandalising a bus shelter.
‘You wouldn’t be worth a bucket of warm spit, would you?’ King hissed. ‘That’s what.’ All trace of geniality had gone.
‘Simmer down,’ Marti insisted. ‘I can’t stand all this aggro, Dad. You said they were giving you something to help you with these rages.’
‘Tranquillisers, that shit. They can shove their chemical coshes . . .’
‘All right, Dad. I get the message. Dave Cunane’s a private detective. I trust him.’
‘Trust him? The only copper I’d trust is a dead one and then I’d want to dig him up and drive a stake through his heart to be sure.’
‘Dad,’ Marti pleaded. ‘For God’s sake, Dave isn’t a copper. His father was but Dave’s not and never has been. He’s willing to listen to what you have to say.’
‘Cunane, did you say?’ King asked in a perceptibly less aggressive voice. ‘There was a Cunane on the Manchester police.’
‘My father,’ I said. ‘And if . . .’
‘OK, OK,’ King said, raising the palms of his hands in a pacific gesture. ‘I suppose the bastards have a job to do. I tell you what, though, the scumbag who put me in here, that Jones . . . that peevish rat . . . he was as bent as a nine-bob note.’
‘You being the world expert on police corruption,’ I snapped.
He gave me a crooked leer. ‘Perhaps I am. Has your old fella filled you in about Detective Inspector Jones?’
‘No,’ I growled.
If his sneer got any cleverer it would be sitting for A levels.
‘Handed in his truncheon, has he, your old fella? Gone to the great cop-shop in the sky?’
‘No, he hasn’t. My father sweated blood trying to prove that Jones was bent. The fact that he failed tells me something.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘If they didn’t find anything against Jones, maybe he was as straight as you’re twisted.’
King started grinding his teeth. For a moment I thought he was going to have a stroke. Then he recovered. The cheeky grin came back.
‘Feisty bastard, i’nt he?’ he muttered, turning to Marti.
Marti looked at me. ‘It’s your own fault, Dad, you shouldn’t have provoked him,’ she said wearily. ‘Can’t you see the problem I have, Dave? He’s like this with everyone who could help. You know what he told the probation officer?’
‘Oh, forget that wimp,’ King said in an undertone. ‘I’ve slopped out better shit than him.’
‘Typical,’ Marti sniffed. ‘He told the man that he’d accept parole when the Home Secretary sent him a letter of apology for the way he’d been treated. So the prison governor won’t even forward an application to the Parole Board.’
‘I don’t want parole. I want justice. I was innocent. Jones fitted me up.’
The three of us sat in silence for a moment. The babble of conversation all around passed us by. I was the first to speak.
‘Look, there have been fit-ups before but who’s going to believe that Jones shot two
men, one of them a copper?’
‘And who else was it, if not him? Me, that never did anyone in me life? We were just starting to shift the gear. I went round a corner and bingo! Out like a bleeding light. Someone coshed me, and not with PP9s in a sock either. It was an expert who used a proper persuader. Hardly left a mark. Then what? I come round. Dennis and this copper are dead. The alarms are ringing like the bells of hell and the filth are all over me like eczema.’
‘You must have had someone else helping you.’
‘No, it was just the one.’
‘They said DC Fullalove must have found you and you shot him.’
‘They said – they never explained what Fullalove was doing there on his own.’
‘You shot him and then you struggled with Musgrave, who knocked you out before you shot him.’
‘Yeah, and then a million quid’s worth of registered mail just walked while I was on the floor?’
‘They said it was a case of thieves falling out.’
‘Bloody fit-up, that’s what it was. Someone removed a whole load of registered mail while I was lying unconscious.’
‘That still doesn’t put Jones in the frame.’
‘Who else but him? Everybody knew he was bent. What did he say about finding me? He’d received an anonymous tip-off. Ha! Where do you think I got my information from? Him. He pulled the double cross and fitted me up.’
‘So you’re saying your inside information came from him?’
King looked at Marti now.
‘It wasn’t directly from Jones. He told someone else who told me.’
‘And who was that?’
‘I’m no grass. If I’d given one name they’d have squeezed me for every name I knew.’
‘So you prefer to stay in here for the rest of your life,’ Marti said bitterly.
‘Yes,’ King said. ‘I know it was Jones. Prove that and then you’ll find out the rest. I swear on Marti’s life that it must have been that bastard who killed Dennis and the copper. Knocked me out and shot the pair of them. I never even went into the room where they were killed. Quick in and out, me. I was noted for it. You don’t dawdle in a high security vault.’
