by J M Gregson
The best of snouts have a nose for information and make considerable sums from the police budget allocated to them. But it is a hazardous trade, for they are divulging information about very dangerous men. Only the most shrewd and cautious of snouts survive for long. Delroy Flecker was moderately shrewd and immensely cautious. He also had the snout’s talent for hoovering up information from a multitude of different sources.
Three hours after he had spoken to Flecker on his mobile, Clyde Northcott, in jeans, trainers and a black polo-neck sweater, moved cautiously through the shadows towards the back entrance of a terraced house in the oldest part of Brunton. There were not many of these houses left now, with flagged stone backyards leading down to heavily bolted wooden gates beside what had originally been outside privies. He flashed his small torch briefly and checked the number twenty-three which was crudely painted in grey upon the green of the door.
The bolts were not drawn. The door squeaked softly as he inched it back on its worn hinges. He listened for a moment, then slid through and moved towards the rear of the house, where light spilled thinly through the crack in the shut curtains. A cat flew suddenly and silently from somewhere near his feet, over the six feet high brick wall to his left and into the blackness beyond it. He was pleased to see the flash of its silhouette for a moment on the top of the wall; he had thought at first it must be a rat.
The door opened immediately to his quiet tap. The man whom he now followed through the battered kitchen and into the room beyond it was a foot shorter than him and half his weight. He sat Clyde down on a dining chair beside the scratched table and took the other one himself. Delroy Flecker was in his fifties, with flecks of white in his frizzy hair and eyes which seemed never to rest anywhere for longer than a second. He was even blacker than Northcott, but where the younger man’s features were as smooth as those of a carved Egyptian deity, Flecker’s were as heavily lined as those of a man twenty years older than himself.
He said, ‘It’s big stuff, this, Mr Northcott. But dangerous for me.’ He glanced nervously over his shoulder, as if fearing that there might be listeners, even in this empty house.
Clyde gave him a brief, encouraging smile. ‘Spit it out, Delroy. Then we’ll decide how big it is.’
‘Charlie Ford.’ Flecker spoke as if the name itself should be impressive, then glanced at Northcott to see if it was.
Charlie Ford was a contract killer, known to have dispatched half a dozen people in the last two years. Like most of his trade, he was impossible to pin down. Those who could have given the evidence which might have brought him to justice were far too frightened to do so. He operated in different parts of the country, under three names, and had almost certainly committed several more killings than the six which the police had assigned to him.
Northcott, professionally impassive, said, ‘It’s a name, Delroy. No more than a name, until you’re prepared to make it more. Can you tell me his target?’
‘No. But I can tell you who was using him and how much he paid.’
‘Let’s have it then.’
Flecker put a gaunt hand on the table, advanced it for a moment towards his visitor, then thought better of the move. ‘I need the money up front, Mr Northcott.’
‘Do you, indeed? Well, I’m afraid you can piss off on that one, Delroy. You know the rules as well as I do. I hear what you have to say; I decide its value, if any. It’s a one-sided world, Delroy, but no one ever told you it was fair.’
‘All right, Mr Northcott. I trust you.’ His voice rose to a whine as he forsook demand and attempted conciliation. ‘This is good, though. You’ll be glad you came here tonight.’
‘I’ve had a long day. I get impatient when I’m tired, Delroy.’
‘It was Tony Valento who used Charlie Ford. He paid him three thousand.’ The facts Flecker had meant to string out tumbled out swiftly under threat.
Three thousand wasn’t enough for a killing. It would be a down payment, the first instalment of a transaction to be completed after the target had been dispatched. ‘When was this?’
‘Thursday night last week. My man saw it happen.’
‘It’s not enough for a killing, Delroy. Has the balance been attended to?’
‘Can’t tell you that, Mr Northcott. I’ll keep my ear to the ground.’
Northcott slid ten twenty pound notes across the table in his closed hand. Flecker’s thin, bony fingers looked like a hen’s scratching foot as he gathered in his payment. A free-range hen, thought Clyde, roaming far and gathering valuable information. He didn’t question the accuracy of what he had been told; Flecker had proved himself over the years as a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. Percy Peach would have known who first said that, thought Northcott; probably bloody Shakespeare. Peach seemed to Clyde to know everything.
‘There’s more where that came from, if you can get more details. How dangerous is it for you?’ He hadn’t asked earlier; that would have been an invitation to Flecker to press for higher payment.
‘It’s always dangerous, Mr Northcott.’
‘Of course it is, Delroy, and you’re St George on a white charger, slaying the dragon of evil. So cut the bullshit and tell me whether you’re taking big risks over this.’
‘No, not really – not by my standards.’ The thin chest bulged like a pouter pigeon’s for a moment, but the look on Clyde’s face cast him straight back to whining mode. ‘I know the score, Mr Northcott. You don’t piss about with contract killers. But I listen ’ard, see. Keep my ears open all the time in the pub. Once people have ’ad a couple, they speak louder than they fink they do. That’s where I picked this up; two of Valento’s ’eavies ’aving a chat.’
‘Find whether the transaction’s now been completed, Delroy. And when. If it gives us a conviction, there’ll be double what you’ve got there.’
The door shut quickly and softly behind him as Clyde Northcott slid into the welcome cool of the darkness outside. He looked up and down the unlit alley outside the wooden door at the bottom of the yard, then kept close to the wall as he moved over two hundred yards of uneven cobblestones and back to the Yamaha. It was bitterly cold on the short ride to his home. But better the cold than the danger of those scum-laden pools which Delroy Flecker trawled for him.
On Thursday morning, thin flakes of snow drifted slowly across Brunton. The days of Lowry’s mills and chimneys were long gone, and the town was crowded with shoppers, but there were enough grimy brick buildings left in the old cotton town for it to retain a shabby air, as the snow turned to sleet and the pavements glistened beneath the Christmas lights.
Clyde Northcott had fed his snout’s revelation into the team’s briefing meeting at eight thirty. It was much the most interesting of the dozen morsels of information which might or might not be relevant to this case. He felt already well into his day when he knocked at the door of Dean Morley’s flat, but Peach beside him was as bouncy and energetic as a Labrador on its morning walk.
Dean Morley’s face fell when he opened the door and saw them beneath the stone steps of the Victorian house. ‘We’ve only just finished breakfast,’ he said accusingly.
‘That’s how the other half lives,’ said Peach to his companion. ‘If you want the soft life, DS Northcott, you should get yourself a job in acting. I should think you’d do well as a Hard Bastard. There seems to be a call for them, in all these unrealistic police series – and there can’t be much competition, amongst the acting fraternity.’
Dean looked with some distaste from the big black man to the much smaller white one beside him; perhaps he could not decide which one represented the greater danger to him and the life he had built for himself. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’
He led them into the high, pleasant, nineteenth-century room with the big bay window and the numerous original paintings. Both of the occupants were in shirt sleeves and Dean felt the need to explain what he obviously felt was a state of déshabillé. ‘Keith is painting today. And I was just beginning to wash
up. I told you, we’ve only just finished breakfast; you should really have told us you were coming here this morning.’
‘Should we, indeed? You sound almost as though you have something to hide, Mr Morley. Doesn’t he, Keith?’ Peach’s question was addressed to Keith Arnold, who was now standing awkwardly in the doorway at the far side of the room, his six-feet frame looking more bony and awkward than ever beneath the paint-stained old shirt he was using as a smock.
He started like a nervous deer when he was addressed. Then he said with an attempt at dignity, ‘If you come here unannounced, you must take us as you find us.’
‘And we shall do just that, Keith.’ Peach divined correctly that a gay man as nervous of police harassment as Arnold obviously was would be more intimidated by the use of his first name. It brought to him memories of past mockings and ancient brutalities. ‘Don’t let me keep you from your painting, Keith.’ Then, as Arnold turned away in relief, he said, ‘If you could just tell us where you were between eight and midnight last Friday night, I don’t think we’ll need you any more.’
The last line was delivered with an actor’s timing, designed to strike Arnold just at the moment when he was thinking that he had been dismissed and his ordeal was over. Dean Morley realized that, but his partner didn’t. Arnold turned and stared panic-stricken at his partner for a significant second before he spoke to Peach. ‘Last Friday? I’m not sure I can recall it instantly. I—’
‘He was here with me. Weren’t you, Keith?’ Arnold nodded, not trusting himself to speak immediately. Morley turned back to Peach. ‘I’ve already answered that for you. I told you when you were here on Tuesday that Keith and I spent the evening here together.’
Percy beamed at him, apparently delighted with their joint discomfiture. ‘Of course you did, Dean. And the very efficient DS Northcott has recorded exactly that. But we needed to have it confirmed for us, you see. By Mr Arnold himself. Without anyone pulling his strings.’
Dean told himself to keep calm. ‘Did you make a resolution to be insolent before you ever set foot in our home this morning, DCI Peach?’
Peach made a good attempt at looking hurt. ‘We need to check things out, Mr Morley. Make sure the other party’s recall of certain events is exactly the same as yours. You’d be surprised how often that isn’t the case.’
‘I was here on Friday night. So was Dean. We were here together at the times you specified.’ Keith Arnold was still standing awkwardly in the doorway. He rapped the words out quickly, as if he needed them over with. ‘I’d been decorating this room all week. I needed time to catch up with my painting.’ His nervousness made the innocent words emerge as if he had carefully memorized them beforehand.
Percy gave him a reassuring beam. ‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it? DS Northcott can put a big tick against what Mr Morley told us about that and we can move on.’
Arnold hesitated for a moment, balancing unsteadily on one leg. Then he said, ‘I’ll be in the next room if you need me. I have paints mixed and ready to go on the canvas.’
Peach watched him depart fondly, as if he were a favourite but rather backward child. His smile faded as he turned back to Morley. ‘We now need to check whether you were completely honest with us about events at the television studio and on location, in the weeks immediately before Mr Cassidy’s death.’
‘I told you no lies about that.’
‘But you might have withheld certain information, which would amount to the same thing.’
‘I don’t think I did. And if I did, it was unwitting.’
‘Unwitting. Interesting word, that, don’t you think, Mr Morley? If you withheld certain facts about the deceased’s relationships, you would be failing to provide the police with the assistance to be expected when they were investigating a serious crime. If the import of what you withheld was significant, you might even be accused of obstructing the police in the course of their enquiries.’
‘What is it you want to know?’
‘Ah! The apparently innocent question which may or may not constitute a shrewd evasion! I don’t know what I want to know, do I? I merely want Mr Dean Morley, a close associate of the deceased for twenty years and more, to be completely frank with me.’
Dean sighed wearily – almost theatrically, Percy thought uncharitably. ‘I’ve told you all about my relationship with Adam. I thought we were close; then he shafted me over my part in the new series. I was devastated by that. But I didn’t kill him. End of story.’
‘Oh, if only it were, Mr Morley. If only it were!’ Peach’s sigh replicated that of the man opposite him. ‘But even if that’s the end of it for you, I still have a murder to solve. And I’m certain you can help me with that.’ He leaned forward until his face was within four feet of Morley’s. ‘If we discount for the moment your own close friendship and its disintegration, what other serious relationships did you discern in the last few weeks of Cassidy’s life?’
Dean was acutely conscious of two things. First, of the face he could not escape in front of him, round and bald and threatening, like a child’s simple but disturbing drawing. And secondly of his partner’s anxious ears, as he stood before his easel in the adjoining room. He licked his lips and put his head down. ‘Michelle Davies. Adam had a thing going with her. The other girls on the set were beginning to rib her about it. From hints she let drop to them, I’m pretty sure Adam was planning to take her away on the weekend he died.’
Peach and Northcott stood on either side of Mark Gilbey and looked out over Salford Quays. With the Lowry Centre dominating the architecture and the sun glinting on wide expanses of water around it, it was the most impressive demonstration available of the transformation of the former slum landscapes of Salford and Manchester to a breathtaking view of the future. The twenty-first century equivalent of Oxford’s dreaming spires in the nineteenth, perhaps. Neither policeman had seen the view from this height before. From the fourteenth storey of the skyscraper, distance lent not enchantment but a kind of detachment to the view. So tiny and so silent were the people and cars which moved below them, that it seemed that they could observe the movements in this Lilliputian world without being part of it.
‘Impressive,’ said Peach conventionally.
‘It’s what you pay for,’ said the man the newspapers called ‘the agent to the stars’.
‘I’m more your Lake District man when it comes to views,’ said Percy. ‘Helvellyn and Striding Edge are more my taste.’
‘They don’t build offices there,’ said Gilbey with a smile.
‘Not yet they don’t. But they’re edging into the green belt.’
‘You said you wanted to see me about Adam Cassidy,’ said Mark. The name signified the end of the preliminaries and the beginning of business. The two CID men went and sat in the comfortable chairs set out for them and Mark resumed his accustomed seat behind his desk.
‘How long had you had Cassidy’s custom, Mr Gilbey?’ said Northcott.
‘Not long enough to negotiate anything for him, unfortunately, though we had begun our efforts to do so. Adam had been with us for less than two weeks at the time of his death.’
‘Which robbed you of his custom and a nice little earner,’ said Peach.
Gilbey was not at all put out by this vulgar mention of money. He plucked at his immaculate cuffs and smiled his professional smile. ‘Indeed. But we shall no doubt make respectable profits from the sales and re-sales around the world of the five series of Call Adam Cassidy which Mr Cassidy had already completed. He passed all existing rights over to us when he signed his new contract.’
‘Very nice for you.’
‘I suppose so. And human nature being what it is, there’ll be interest in a star who has just been sensationally murdered. There’ll be a demand from around the world. It will be short-term, but it should last long enough for us to secure some lucrative sales for the Cassidy estate and some useful commission for us.’ Mark Gilbey didn’t seem disappointed that human nature should be
so flawed. He looked more like a cat presented with a bowl of cream.
‘All of which must add to Mr Valento’s chagrin.’
‘I don’t suppose he’d know the meaning of that word. Tony Valento’s troubles don’t concern me. He’s a rogue and I hope he suffers for it.’
‘A rogue capable of murder, Mr Gilbey?’
‘Capable of it certainly. Guilty of it in the past, I’m sure, though not with his own greasy hands. But you would know more about that than I do.’
‘Very probably. The question is: did he have Adam Cassidy killed?’
‘I don’t know and I’m glad it’s not my job to find out. I do know that he so much resented Adam’s decision to change his agent that he was considering violence.’
Peach raised his expressive black eyebrows. ‘When and where, Mr Gilbey?’
‘In a phone call he made to me last week. The Tuesday before Adam Cassidy was killed, I think. He’d just heard that we were to be Adam’s new agents.’
‘Can you tell us exactly what he said?’
Mark gave them the professional smile which comes from supreme competence. ‘I can do more than that, gentlemen. It is our policy to retain tapes. Sometimes the exact words people say are highly important, as I’m sure you find yourselves.’ He reached into the top drawer of his desk, produced the cassette he had kept there ever since he heard about his new client’s death, and slipped it into the player.
They heard the rising notes of Valento’s wrath at his client’s defection and the counterpoint of Gilbey’s coolly scornful replies. They heard the rival agent’s final, frustrated words, ‘The slimy sod’s going to have to answer to me for this!’ Clyde Northcott recorded them gleefully in his notebook and the CID prepared to leave this spectacular eyrie.
