by Frank Lean
I lay back on the bed with my head in a whirl. Was Marti now so well in with Brandon that he sent her on trawling expeditions to see what I knew? Or was it all about her father?
My reverie was interrupted a few moments later when one of the night sisters entered the room.
‘My goodness, Mr Cunane, what have you been up to? The bed’s like a ploughed field and you’re all sweaty.’
She took my pulse. ‘That’s high,’ she said. ‘You haven’t been doing press-ups or something, have you?’
‘I’ve never left this bed,’ I said.
55
WHEN I DRIFTED into sleep for the final time that Tuesday I had a vague idea of signing myself out of the hospital again in the morning. I didn’t fancy another question and answer session with Brendan Cullen, particularly as there were still more questions than answers in my own mind.
As it turned out I was going nowhere. A mild sedative the night sister had supplied, the exertions of Marti’s visit, the feeling of excitement and disappointment combined; all resulted in a profound and unfeigned weariness. I was barely conscious when Bren came round. He stood by my bedside and grumbled for a few minutes before leaving. As far as I knew no one else visited me that day and I got some rest.
It was only on Thursday morning when the chaplain called that I began to regain some interest in the vertical world. It hit me then that they had me down as a serious possibility for cashing my chips.
‘Your mother’s been in touch,’ the priest, a red-haired Irishman called Mulligan, said. ‘She’s very anxious that you get yourself right with God.’
‘No thanks,’ I mumbled. I think I was more frightened of that prospect than of the combined intervention of the Carlyle family and a whole platoon of South African hit women. Fr Mulligan shook his head sadly, gave me a blessing and left. However, fear’s a powerful stimulant and by Thursday afternoon I was distinctly perkier.
I felt cosy, lying there and setting the wheels of justice in motion to right a wrong, cosy but slightly nervous. I was hot. Plotting revenge is sweaty work. I knew that most of what Marti had told me was open to interpretation. Brandon Carlyle had certainly suspected that Charlie or Marti had had a hand in the demise of Lou Olley, but where did that leave me? Could I outmanoeuvre Brandon? He had spent a lifetime dodging and weaving to come out on the right side of things. Should I just go and throw myself on his mercy and plead ignorance? Or should I run for cover?
No, that wasn’t the way things were going to go. I found the idea that Brandon was behind the success of Pimpernel Investigations gut-wrenching. Was it true? I’d probably never know, but what I did know was that I had as much right to a place in the sun as any of the Carlyles. The thought filled me with anger. The gall of that old man to patronise me! Feeble though I was I wanted to lash out. I should have pounded Charlie to jelly when I had the chance. Who were these people? It was time somebody got the better of them – but how?
As a private detective it wasn’t my job to go round righting wrongs, and there was enough of my father in me for me to know that Vince King had probably got away with lots of unpunished crime for which his ‘unearned time’ could be seen as just retribution in the higher scheme of things. Still, the idea of King on the streets was the one thing which seemed to give Brandon Carlyle something to worry about, and the more he had to worry about the better were the chances of survival of myself and Pimpernel Investigations.
It took all the energy I’d accumulated to persuade the nurse to bring the phone.
‘Marvin,’ I said. ‘Send the letter to the Home Secretary.’
He promised to do it at once and I slumped back into my sheets to await developments.
They let me out of hospital at the weekend and I was well enough to take part in the triumphant release of Vince King on the following Monday. The top of my head was still bandaged, and if you look at the television footage of Vince’s release, which Celeste’s mother thoughtfully videoed for us, you can just get a glimpse of a white football bobbing about at the back of the scrum. Marvin and Celeste did all the talking and they had plenty to say about the miscarriage of justice. I was very happy to leave it all to them. As for the man himself, he was surprisingly sombre when we got him back to Manchester.
Vince showed no interest in calling on Marti or even going out on his own. He stayed in my flat. I put this down to reaction at first, but when he was still insisting on having myself or Peter Snyder around with him at the end of the week I began to wonder . . . Talking to him was a strain. He had an odd attitude to me, as if I was a partner in crime. He kept discussing various criminals, mostly dead ones, as if I’d known them personally, but showed no interest in a visit to his old haunts. He spent a lot of time by the window scanning the street.
I asked him who he was expecting but got a blank look in reply.
The news about the death of Mick Jones produced a grimace of mild irritation, but the only topic he showed any interest in was my description of the Carlyle home.
‘Cameras and beams and sensors, eh? You know what I’ve always found? The more electronics they have, the sloppier they are.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ I muttered. If Vince fancied an unauthorised tour of the Carlyle premises, who was I to stop him?
‘You know what one of the most popular study courses in prison is?’
I shook my head.
‘Electronics.’
He went over and over my description of South Pork as if building a picture in his mind. I tried direct questions about his past and about Marti’s theories but got the blank stare treatment again.
I’d been tempted to lash him to a chair and toast his feet in the oven but my condition ruled out anything strenuous; besides, Vince was a media celebrity, at least for the moment. The phone at Pimpernel Investigations rang almost continually with requests for interviews. Otherwise Vince King made an undemanding guest at Thornleigh Court. He expected everything to be done by numbers as in prison and if I wasn’t around to entertain him was content to stare at the road or the telly. The only break in my normal routine was that he insisted on having the TV tuned to racing the whole time.
‘You berk!’ he yelped when I pressed for an explanation. ‘I was safer inside than out. The least you can do is stick with me for a few days until I find my feet.’
‘The only time I’ve seen Brandon Carlyle lose his temper was when I said that I was looking for a miscarriage of justice in your case,’ I said, trying to provoke a reaction.
‘I bet that got up his nose,’ King said laconically.
‘What is it? Does he owe you money, did he fit you up or what?’ I was getting irritated. I could hardly tell him that it would be nice if he went and stuffed Brandon Carlyle immediately.
‘Leave it out, son,’ King said with a smile. ‘I’ve been wound up by experts. I’ve waited years to sort things with Brandon Carlyle and I’ll do it when I’m good and ready.’
‘Meanwhile, what are you waiting for?’
‘I’ve got lots of friends here in Manchester, people who’ll take their time before contacting me.’
‘Why?’
‘They’ll want to check if I’ve grassed to get out. But when they find that I haven’t they’ll be in touch and then Mr High and Mighty Carlyle can start worrying,’ he said mysteriously.
He wouldn’t say who his friends were and that was all I got out of him until on Sunday afternoon I got a distress call from my mother. ‘Dave, your dad’s taken a turn for the worse,’ she said.
I felt a hand squeezing my heart.
‘He hasn’t eaten or spoken since they let that Vince King out of prison. It’s as if he’s decided to die. You’ve got to do something.’
The expression on my face when I put the phone down must have told King that it was bad news.
‘What?’ he grunted.
‘Later,’ I said, going into the bedroom to make another, more private call.
‘So what was all that about, sweetheart?’ he said sarcasti
cally when I came back into the living room thirty minutes later. ‘Woman trouble?’
‘My father,’ I said, ‘he’s gone into a decline since they let you out.’
‘The old bastard! Is he going to croak?’
‘Not if I can help it. I think it’s time we had a few explanations, don’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It would be nice to know why you spent twenty-odd years doing time for a crime you didn’t commit. You must have known that Morton Almond and James McMahon weren’t exactly the “dream team” when it came to your defence. Just what is it between you and Brandon Carlyle?’
King’s green eyes sparkled with fun and he laughed out loud.
‘If you think I’m going to lose any sleep because some barmy old copper decides to die you can think again. I’ll send a cheap wreath to his funeral but that’s it.’
‘That’s not it. You’re going to come with me and we’re going to unravel exactly who did what to whom all those years ago.’
‘And who’s going to make me?’ he asked.
‘I am,’ Brendan Cullen said quietly. He’d let himself in from the hall. Vince King knew Bren’s profession at a glance.
‘What the fuck have you got the Old Bill here for?’ he bawled. ‘I didn’t grass before and I’m not grassing now!’
‘That’s all right,’ I said evenly. ‘Nobody’s asking you to grass. If you don’t want to come with me, DCI Cullen here will take you to see your daughter at the Carlyle place. It’s curious that such a fond daughter as Marti hasn’t even phoned to see how you are, let alone visited, so we thought we’d help the family reunion along.’
‘I’ve told you. I’ll see her and her in-laws when I’m good and ready.’
‘You’ll see them now,’ I said.
‘That’s right, sunshine, you come with me,’ Bren said.
‘Fuck off!’
‘Dear me, we’re only asking you to come and see your loving daughter and all your rich in-laws,’ Bren taunted.
Vince began grinding his teeth at this.
‘Rich, are they? Wait till you see what they’re like when I’ve done with them.’
‘Why all this aggro?’ Bren asked with that infuriating smile of his. ‘Marti is your daughter, after all.’
‘She’s disowned me. I don’t blame her, she’s family, but them!’
‘You’re going to see the Carlyles or you’re going to see Dave’s dad, and we’re going to hear the full story. Make your mind up, and you can forget about incriminating yourself. Nobody’s going to bang you up again after all this media circus about an innocent man doing twenty years. Christ! You’re that bloody innocent you’d have to shoot the Prime Minister before the Home Office and the CPS would agree to you being banged up again!’
King gave a crooked grin at this.
‘I’m not going to see the old bugger and you can’t make me. I’m safe here. If Carlyle tries anything I can see him coming at me. Out there in the sticks anything might happen.’
‘Maybe this will persuade you,’ I said, taking out the Walther PPK 9mm automatic that had been concealed behind the water heater in the bathroom.
King’s eyes widened but he didn’t seem particularly impressed. ‘Get stuffed,’ he said. ‘You’d never use that, not with a copper here.’
‘Use what?’ Bren asked blandly.
My first shot missed his ankle by a millimetre and thudded into the woodwork of the chair he was sitting on, sending splinters flying.
‘Persuasive, aren’t you?’ King said, getting out of his chair. ‘Never did get on with me own relatives. Is it far to the old copper’s drum?’ he asked cheekily.
There was snow on the ground when we reached the West Pennine Moors and the track down to the cottage was almost impassable. Jake Carless poked his head round his door when we slithered past his shack but he withdrew it with a malicious scowl when he saw me. There was a distant thump of explosives from a quarry further back in the hills.
The change in my father was shocking. His face and his whole body seemed to have shrunk and there was a grey pallor over him as if death had already claimed him.
‘He’s been brooding about the Carlyles and that DI Mick Jones ever since you got involved with them, Dave,’ my mother said. Her tone wasn’t accusatory but we both knew what was at the back of her mind. ‘When they let that Vince King out and there was all that on the television about police corruption and incompetence it was more than he could cope with.’
‘This is Vince King,’ I said.
She clapped her hand to her mouth in horror. ‘What are you trying to do? Kill Paddy outright? He’s sinking fast as it is.’
‘Dave and I think that Vince owes an explanation, particularly to Paddy, and that when Paddy hears it he may feel better,’ Bren said.
Eileen struggled to take this in. She was looking haggard. She’d lost that sprightliness that had kept her looking young for so long. I wasn’t in any doubt that if Paddy died she wouldn’t be around for much longer either. But then Eileen showed why she’d been able to put up with Paddy, and perhaps with me as well, for so long.
‘Look at us!’ she cackled suddenly. ‘The Cunane family! Him upstairs, taken to his bed with melancholy because they’re laughing at his beloved police force and him not even personally involved, me brooding myself into the grave years before my time and our son going round with his head in a bandage like Pudsey Bear, and you want to bring a convict into the house!’
‘I wasn’t guilty!’ Vince King bridled.
‘Not of what they got you for,’ Eileen corrected.
He laughed at this. ‘You’re all right for a copper’s wife,’ he said. ‘OK, lead me to the old bast . . . er . . . the old man.’
‘Who are you calling a bastard?’ Paddy snorted when King entered his bedroom. ‘Tell us how Brandon Carlyle got away with it.’ He sat up in bed impatiently.
56
‘WHO’S BEEN TALKING?’ King snarled.
‘Actually, it was Marti,’ I said. ‘She has some idea that you persuaded Carlyle to take her out of that children’s home they had her in because you threatened to grass on him.’
‘Never, I’d never grass!’ King said. Denial was a conditioned reflex as he seemed to realise himself. A slow grin spread over his sharp features. ‘At least, I’d never grass unless it suited me to.’
‘It was you did the bloody police computer room, wasn’t it?’ Paddy said fiercely. I looked at him in fright. A blue vein was standing out on his emaciated forehead.
Cullen looked at me in puzzlement. I shook my head. I was no wiser than him.
‘Never got me for it though, did you?’ King crowed. ‘I’ve never been done for my real work.’
‘Tell us,’ Bren invited.
‘Make us comfortable first!’ King snapped.
Paddy took the hint and fished a whisky bottle out from under his sheets.
‘And I thought you were dying!’ Eileen screeched, but she bustled round and soon we were all seated.
‘How did you get in?’ Paddy said eventually.
‘One of yours, how else?’ King replied smoothly.
‘Jones?’
King shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know about that, but I do know it was bloody tight in those crawl spaces.’
‘The police computer room . . . it was supposed to be manned twenty-four hours a day and to be one of the most secure places in the country,’ Paddy explained. ‘Your friend here stole a blackmailer’s treasure chest from it. Enough to set Brandon Carlyle up for life.’
‘But I didn’t know that for a long time, did I?’ King said. ‘I only did it as a favour. It was a bloody dangerous place as I found out later. I was let in but then I had to hide. They didn’t tell me that there was a fire damping mechanism that flushed the whole place with an inert gas at the first sign of fire, did they? I was on the point of lighting up before I realised that. It wouldn’t have done much good for me, that gas. They had these banks of bloody big co
mputers, ICL 2900s, and there was me under the raised floor in the crawl space. Good job I didn’t light up. They’d only have ever found me by the nasty smell.’
‘I shouldn’t be telling you this but it doesn’t seem to matter now,’ Paddy said. ‘The police in Manchester had a copy of the so-called Round Up list. That’s what chummy here stole. I think a branch of the security service has been going round tidying things up recently.’
‘They don’t know what you’re on about, cocker,’ King said. ‘They were still in short pants when all this was going down.’
‘They were expecting a war with the USSR at any time,’ Paddy said conversationally. His gaze went beyond us to the bleak snow-covered hills outside. A chill had crept into the room. As if in confirmation of our thoughts there was the boom of a distant explosion. ‘Blasting again,’ Paddy commented before continuing . . . ‘Right into the eighties a nuclear exchange was considered to be a fair possibility. Naturally the police were involved in the Government’s precautions.’
‘You sound like a bloody civil servant,’ King complained.
Paddy shrugged. ‘Part of those precautions involved rounding up the many hundreds of subversives who’d been trained in the Soviet Union to make maximum trouble in this country in the event of war. Lists of suspects had been prepared by the security service and they were to be taken into preventive detention as soon as the Russians made a move – emergency powers. Hah! You’ll laugh now, but it wasn’t so funny at the time. They’d designated the football and cricket stadiums at Old Trafford as one of the primary collection points: political militants and CP sympathisers were going in the football ground, and agents of influence and saboteurs were to go in the cricket ground.’
‘Where were they going from there? I asked.
Paddy looked shy for once. ‘They didn’t tell us that,’ he said quickly.
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Dave, it was serious,’ he said angrily. ‘What are you supposed to do with convicts and prisoners in a nuclear war? NATO believed that the Warsaw Pact intended to cause massive disruption in this country prior to a ground invasion across the north German plain. There were plans for feeding the prisoners for the first couple of weeks but after that it was down to the politicians. I think it depended on how rough things got. If they’d dropped nuclear bombs on Britain or the Russkies had invaded I think they were going to get the option of recanting or standing in front of a firing squad.’
