Beside a Narrow Stream

by Faith Martin

  ‘What’s he been up to now? I thought he only got out a while ago.’

  Sam shrugged graphically. ‘So he did. But you know Malkie. Not the sharpest knife in the box. Whilst he was doing time in Birmingham, he hooked up with this bloke who worked a gang who specialize in raiding security vans.’

  Hillary groaned. ‘Don’t tell me.’

  ‘Right. We got a tip-off last week about this van getting heisted this morning. Set up a sting and voilà. A nice little haul of scumbags.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Hillary said, and meant it. She knew how taking down blaggers could give a whole station house a lift. ‘Kept that quiet, didn’t you?’ she asked with a grin. ‘I never even heard a whisper about it.’

  Sam shrugged. He was fast getting a reputation as a master thieftaker, and she could see him making DI on the back of this latest success. ‘You know how it is,’ he said grimly. ‘The less people know …’

  ‘The less they can hurt you,’ Hillary agreed flatly. Although neither of them liked it, they knew leaks were a fact of life in any station house. Mostly it was down to some gormless uniform with a pet reporter who fed him a couple of hundred here and there. But sometimes the leaks were far less harmless.

  ‘Anyway, it seems Malkie has got himself a woman,’ Sam took up the story again, and Hillary blinked in surprise. Unless she’d got it wrong, Malkie Coles was a weasel-faced, buck-toothed, scrawny little runt with practically no hair, and killer halitosis.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Sam laughed, reading her expression. ‘It made my mind boggle, too. Apparently she’s one of these women who hang around hair salons as a private contractor doing nails (fingers and toes, apparently) and beauty treatments and what not, while the women sit under the dryers waiting for the perm to set. According to Malkie, this angel of mercy has turned his life around.’

  Hillary grunted. ‘Not enough to stop him trying to turn over security vans, apparently,’ she said sceptically.

  ‘No,’ Sam said with a grin. ‘Well, according to Malkie he more or less had to do the job because he’d promised his old cell mate back in Birmingham, and he didn’t feel he could let the gang down. But after that one job he was going to go straight.’ Sam held one hand over his heart, and the other up, as if petitioning God, and rolled his eyes.

  Hillary grinned. ‘Such cynicism, Sam,’ she shook her head sorrowfully.

  ‘Yeah. Well, the upshot is, Malkie had been seeing wedding bells in his future, a little house without too much graffiti damage in Blackbird Leys and maybe one or two little nipper Coles running around, snatching purses off unwary pensioners.’

  Hillary shuddered. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Thing is, our Malkie has suddenly twigged to the fact that this time he could be looking at twenty years inside, max. And not even the little angelic manicurist is going to wait that long for him. So he’s anxious to do a deal and try and cut down on his time.’

  Hillary raised a brow. ‘All very interesting, but why bend my ear? Doesn’t your guv’nor want to go for it?’

  ‘Oh, he’s fine with it. But Malkie’s dropping everyone he can think of in the mire. We’ve got people from burglary in with him now, and the sex crimes unit want a word as well, ’cause he reckons one of his other cell mates from ten years ago bragged of several rapes he got away with, back in the late eighties. He also claims that someone you may be interested in, recently hired him to beat someone up.’

  Hillary tensed as Sam checked his notebook. ‘A Mr Thomas Eaverson. Malkie claimed he was approached by Mr Eaverson to beat up Wayne Sutton. That’s your murder vic, ain’t it?’

  Hillary smiled grimly. Behind Sam, Gemma, who’d been listening to every word, caught her eye.

  Hillary nodded. ‘Yeah, bring him in,’ she said to her DS, making Sam turn around to look at her. ‘Sam, this is Gemma Fordham, my new sergeant. Gemma, Sam Waterstone. And Gemma, find Frank and take him with you.’

  The two sergeants nodded at each other, a shade warily perhaps, and Sam watched her go. ‘Good idea getting her to take Ross. He’s not much use, but he’s a vicious little bastard and a good one to have in your corner if a suspect cuts up rough.’

  Hillary gurgled with abrupt laughter. ‘Oh it’s not that! Gemma’s one of those kung-fu experts. She’d probably tie Eaverson in a knot if he even so much as laid a finger on her. No, I just wanted her to take Ross so I’d know where the lazy bugger was.’

  Sam Waterstone laughed, but with real sympathy.

  Ten minutes later, Hillary looked across the scratched table at Malkie Coles, and offered him a polo mint. It wasn’t to put him at ease, so much, as to fend off the bad breath that wafted across the space between them.

  ‘Ta, DI Green,’ Malkie Coles said, and took two of the mints. It was a curious fact that Malkie Coles was always very polite. He always said please and thank you, and after swearing at police officers arresting him, very often apologized. His mother, it seems, had raised her son to have manners. No moral conscience mind you, or even a rudimentary grip of right and wrong. But manners – definitely.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Hillary said politely back, and beside her, saw Sam Waterstone raise a hand to his lips to hide his smile. ‘So, tell me about Mr Eaverson,’ she said casually.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man who wanted Wayne Sutton beat up,’ Sam said sharply. Having put Hillary Greene on to him, he didn’t want the little weasel showing him up.

  ‘Oh, him. Right. Comes up to me in my local, and introduced himself as Mr Robinson. I ask you!’ Malkie appealed to them both, and both obligingly smiled. ‘Still, I suppose it was better than Mr Smith,’ Malkie said. ‘At least he made a bit of an effort to be original like.’

  ‘And I’m sure you appreciated it, Malkie,’ Sam said, a shade impatiently.

  ‘Course, I soon found out who he really was,’ Malkie said complacently.

  ‘Very wise of you, Malkie,’ Sam said flatly.

  ‘Nice of you to say so, Mr Waterstone.’

  Sam sighed heavily. It was, he knew from bitter experience, pointless trying to hurry Malkie Coles along. The villain could only go at one speed – his own.

  ‘Why don’t you just tell us all about it,’ Hillary said, having learned the same thing. ‘This man just walks up to you one night in the pub. When was this?’

  ‘Dunno. About three weeks ago maybe? He asked me if I was Malkie Coles, and I said yeah, and he said, “Somebody told me you did odd jobs like. With your fist”, and I looks at him funny like. I mean he was talking quiet, but we were in the boozer for crying out loud! So I says “Why don’t we talk about this outside”, and he looks a bit sick like, as if I’m going to take him round the dustbins and duff him up. Well, I shrugs. I mean, no skin off my nose is it? But then he grows a bit of a backbone like, so he says “all right”, and we go outside.’

  Malkie paused to give his polo mints a vigorous sucking and take a much needed breath. Hillary sighed and reached inside her pocket for the rest of the roll of mints, and handed the whole lot over. Whoever interviewed him next had better appreciate it.

  Malkie beamed and thanked her nicely.

  ‘So anyway, we goes outside and I sits on this wall,’ the armed robber carried on blithely, ‘still drinking my pint like, and this bloke asks me how much it is to beat up some punk. As if there was a price list or sommat!’ He snorted a laugh, and Hillary shook her head.

  ‘Some people, hey Malkie?’ she said softly.

  ‘Yeah, some people,’ Malkie echoed sadly. ‘So, anyway, I say “How much you got on you, then”, and he looks all sort of surprised. Then he takes out his bloody wallet then and there and draws out a wad of tenners. I mean, well, I nearly cried. Is this pigeon asking to be taken down or what?’

  ‘Practically crying out for it, Malkie,’ Sam Waterstone said drily.

  Malkie nodded, glad to have two such knowledgeable cops talking to him at last. Those last morons from burglary didn’t seem to know nothing. Both in their twenties and still wet behind their ear
s. No, give him proper coppers, like these two, any day of the week.

  ‘So anyway, he goes “I’ve only got a hundred and seventy” and I says, “that’ll do”, and he hands the stuff over. Then he brings out this picture of this bloke. Looks like it was taken at a party or something. And he says, “His name is Wayne Sutton. His address is written on the back.” And so I turns it over, and sure enough, there was this address written on the back. Funny kind of place name. Deddington. I mean, who’d want to live in a place called that?’

  And Malkie, who’d lived for part of his life in Newport Pagnell, shuddered.

  Hillary shook her head. ‘The things some folk do,’ she agreed sadly.

  Malkie nodded, ripped into the polo mints and popped a few more into his mouth. ‘You can say that again. So, anyways, I tells him the job’s as good as done, and does he want any bones broken, or any organs ruptured, or what.’

  Malkie chewed vigorously for a while, then smiled, revealing nicotine-stained teeth. ‘That made the geezer turn a bit pale, I can tell you. So then he says, “Oh no, nothing too violent. Nothing life-threatening.” Honest, that’s how he put it. Very lah-di-dah. “Nothing life threatening.” I nearly laughed in his face,’ Malkie said bitterly.

  Then he shrugged philosophically. ‘Still. Then he said he wanted me to make sure his pretty face got properly rearranged. Seemed most insistent about that. So I said, sure, I knew what he wanted. Pop a few of his teeth out for him, smash his nose up good and proper, that sort of thing. I could tell from his photo that he was a good-looking sort of lad. I figured he’d been bonking “Mr Robinson’s” missus, that’s why he wanted his face rearranged.’

  ‘Good guess,’ Hillary said drolly.

  Malkie nodded in satisfaction. It was nice to be right. ‘So I tell him not to worry, job’s good as done, then went into the pub and stood everybody a round.’

  ‘And when were you going to rearrange Wayne’s face for him?’ Hillary asked, and Malkie’s small, watery eyes rounded slightly.

  ‘Hey? Never. Don’t be daft. I just took his money, didn’t I? I wasn’t actually going to go traipsing off to bloody Deddington to give someone a pasting. Why bother? It’s not as if “Mr Robinson”,’ Malkie quoted the name again with a sneer, ‘was going to complain, is it? I mean, what’s he going to do?’ Malkie laughed. ‘Silly sod. ’Sides he paid me up front, didn’t he? Why do the work if you’ve already been paid, that’s what I say? I mean, what muffin pays up front?’ Malkie asked, scandalized.

  Hillary sighed. ‘So there really is no honour among thieves, huh? All my illusions are shattered.’

  ‘Eh?’ Malkie said, looking puzzled. ‘He weren’t no thief, just some silly sod who wanted someone duffed up.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘Right. Sorry, Malkie, don’t know what I was thinking. So, if I bring Mr Eaverson in, you’ll formally identify him and testify that he hired you to give Wayne Sutton a beating?’

  ‘Sure,’ Malkie said magnanimously. ‘So, you think he done him in then? That good-looking kid who was boffing his wife? When I read in the papers he’d ended up dead, I wondered if our “Mr Robinson” had got tired of waiting for me to biff him and decided to take him out himself.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hillary said, amused. ‘What do you think?’

  Malkie chewed his mints and thought judiciously. He thought for so long and so hard, that both police officers were almost prepared to swear they could hear the clogs clanking around in what passed for Malkie’s mind. Then the old lag shook his head.

  ‘Nah, can’t see it myself. If he hadn’t the bottle to duff up the kid himself, but needed to hire out for it, I can’t see him having the bottle to actually off the kid. Can you?’

  Hillary thanked Malkie politely for his help, nodded a thanks at Sam, and left. Outside, she nodded at two officers from the sex crimes unit. ‘Thanks for waiting. He’s all yours.’

  Gemma Fordham looked up as DI Greene walked into the interview room. It was getting on for late in the afternoon, and she and Ross had been baby-sitting Tommy Eaverson for what felt like years now.

  Frank heaved an ostentatious sigh as Hillary took her seat. If the tape hadn’t already been running, she might have made some caustic comment along the lines of being sorry for making him do his damned job. But she merely glared at him instead.

  Taking the hint, Ross slumped down in his seat and stared at the wall behind the suspect. He looked so heavy-lidded, Hillary suspected he’d probably fall asleep at some point, if he wasn’t careful.

  Gemma introduced DI Greene for the tape and Hillary smiled across the table. ‘Mr Eaverson, I’m sure DS Fordham has told you that you’re entitled to have a solicitor present?’

  ‘Sure she told me,’ Tommy Eaverson said, with a scowl. ‘But I can’t see why I need to bring Jim Watson into this.’

  Hillary’s eyebrow lifted. James Wilberforce Watson wasn’t a solicitor but a QC. And if he was Tommy’s personal friend and legal adviser, he obviously had friends in some very high places.

  ‘Very well,’ she said blandly. ‘I have, next door, a man by the name of Malkie Coles. He tells me …’

  ‘I want a solicitor,’ Tommy Eaverson said flatly.

  Four hours later, Hillary drove home feeling exhausted. James Watson, on receiving Mr Eaverson’s one allotted phone call, had promptly sent down to HQ a legal eagle by the name of Geoffrey Whiting, who was so sharp he could cut diamonds. And eager to impress the great James Watson.

  Consequently, it had been a struggle to get Tommy Eaverson even to admit to knowing Malkie, despite the fact that Malkie picked him out at a line-up. Whiting had then pointed out that an old lag such as Coles was hardly a credible witness, and that if no other witnesses from the ‘alleged’ pub could be found, his client was leaving now.

  Hillary had promptly dealt with that nonsense, but it had been an uphill battle all the way.

  She’d then proceeded to tackle Eaverson from all angles – from leaving his wife, to having a vendetta against the murder victim, to hiring a hit man and even playing on his inability to keep a wife sexually satisfied. The last had had the fancy brief almost incoherent with outrage.

  Towards the end of the interview, she’d even been goaded into an enormous bluff, and told Eaverson that they knew all about ‘Annie’, although Gemma hadn’t yet had time to track her down.

  This had proved interesting, in that Eaverson had immediately said that his mistress, and the soon to be second Mrs Eaverson, was nothing to do with her. Whiting had managed to shut him up fast, but not before the damage had been done. It had been a brief and only partial victory, but after that gruelling battle with Whiting, it had been sweet indeed.

  Eventually, of course, she’d had to let him go. Coles’s word wasn’t enough to charge him with conspiracy to cause actual bodily harm, but she’d put Barrington up to casing out the pub in question tonight. If anyone had overheard any of the conversation between Coles and Eaverson, she wanted to know about it.

  But since Eaverson had paid Coles with money straight from his wallet, she knew there would be no bank withdrawal evidence to confirm his having paid Coles any set amount, and she knew in her bones that she could kiss any chance of charging Eaverson goodbye.

  Nevertheless, as her final order of the day, she’d told Gemma Fordham to make finding out all about Eaverson’s Annie a top priority. Who she was, how long they’d been having an affair, and, most important of all, if she could possibly have known, or have any connection with, their murder victim.

  But again, in her bones, she knew that wouldn’t pan out either. Eaverson’s Annie would probably turn out to be a respectable PA or secretary-type, on the look out for a rich husband to make her middle-age nice and comfortable. And she almost certainly wouldn’t have known Wayne Sutton if he’d prodded her with a big stick.

  That evening, Hillary turned into Thrupp, never more happy to see home. Along cold shower, a glass of wine, and a doze on top of the boat in the last of the rays, that was what she n
eeded now.

  She parked in her usual place in The Boat car park and walked tiredly along the canal. The May blossom was out, casting a heady, slightly sickly scent on the air. As expected, the moorhen chicks had hatched, and already the parent birds eyed her hopefully. She tossed them the sandwich she’d kept back, then gave a small cry of delight as she recognized the boat moored up behind hers.

  Willowsands was back.

  She hurried her pace, and ignoring her own boat, knocked sharply on the roof. ‘Ageing reprobates beware,’ she yelled. ‘This is a police raid.’

  ‘It’s a fair cop, guv,’ a voice yelled back cheerfully from the depths of the boat. ‘I’ve got two nineteen-year-old divinity students, one Polish foreign exchange student and a stoned wood carver down here. Give us a break, guv. The Pole doesn’t even speak a word of English.’

  The door opened, and Nancy Walker’s head popped up. She’d recently dyed her head a dark brunette, and she was looking fabulous. Hillary, who wouldn’t put it past the predatory divorcee to have just who she said she had already stashed on board, grinned.

  ‘You decent?’

  ‘Hardly!’ Nancy snorted. ‘I’m already half-plastered. Come on down, I made some margaritas. You can help me finish them off.’

  Hillary almost groaned out loud. ‘After the afternoon from hell I’ve just had, I could kiss you.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Nancy called back, over her shoulder. ‘I don’t swing both ways.’

  Once inside, Hillary kicked off her shoes and accepted a drink, guzzling it down in three swallows. Nancy watched, impressed, and took the glass for an instant refill. This one Hillary sipped more slowly.

  The two old friends spent the last of the daylight hours reminiscing and catching up.

  ‘You know, it’s funny you should come back now,’ Hillary said, at last, as Nancy went around turning on the 40-watt bulbs. Like most boat-dwellers, she had a constant battle not to use too much electricity, thus running down the generators. ‘I was actually thinking of taking the Mollern up to Stratford some time soon, to see if I could catch up with you.’