Over the Edge

by Stuart Pawson

  I was looking out of his window when I heard the click of the door catch as he came back into the room.

  ‘You all right, Charlie?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, fine, thanks,’ I replied, moving back to the chair I’d been sitting on. ‘Can I keep this?’

  ‘Yes, of course, and I’ll have the originals returned to you, as soon as I can. What did you make of the message on the back?’

  ‘On the back?’ I hadn’t seen a message on the back. I turned the page over but the reverse side was blank, then I realised that there were two sheets.

  The writing was much different on the second sheet. It was drawn out and had lost its neatness and precision. It was a drunken scrawl, and a shiver ran through me as I realised that she’d been far-gone as she’d struggled to write her final message. Oh, Rosie, Rosie, I thought. Why did you put yourself through this?

  The words were difficult to decipher, each one tapering off as if the exertion were too much for her. The first one was particularly obscure.

  Shahtoosh, I read. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Is that an S or is it a G?’ Graham asked, pointing with a finger.

  ‘It looks like an S to me, but a G doesn’t help much, either, does it?’

  ‘No. It doesn’t.’

  It just came to me, the note continued. It’s a nasty business. Ros

  That was all. ‘It doesn’t mean anything to me,’ I said.

  ‘She was probably hallucinating,’ he suggested. ‘Like when you’re dreaming and have these enlightening thoughts on how to attain world peace. They turn out to be gibberish.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘How long had you known her, Charlie?’

  ‘Not long, about six months,’ I replied, although four months was probably nearer the mark. ‘We weren’t, you know, an item. Just good friends. I wanted it to be more than that, but Rosie fought shy of it, as you’ll have gathered from the note. I went to a geology class, and Rosie was the teacher…’ I left it hanging, left it for him to imagine how the hotshot detective had been smitten by the slim-shouldered tomboy with the shock of silver hair.

  ‘What about her next of kin?’

  Poor old Superintendent Myers, I thought. Lumbered with me but still having to play the policeman. ‘Her mother is in a nursing home in Norfolk,’ I told him. ‘She has dementia or something. Rosie reverted to her maiden name, so her mother will be called Barraclough, too. And there’s a brother…somewhere, but he’s…they don’t talk, he’s disowned her. And the ex-husband, of course. I don’t know his name. Her father committed suicide. He hanged himself.’

  ‘That fits,’ he said. ‘These things often run in the family.’

  I stood up and glanced towards the window. Darkness had crept up on us and the sky was yellow with the glow of sodium lamps. ‘Thanks for everything, Graham,’ I said. ‘I’ll look for somewhere to stay and see you in the morning.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he replied. ‘I’ve told my wife to set an extra place and air the bed in the spare room. You’re staying with us tonight.’

  I didn’t have any choice. The meal was excellent but I wasn’t hungry. We sat and talked, sometimes about the world we lived in, sometimes about the job and a little bit about Rosie. Graham had never handled a murder case – which is the norm, most senior officers haven’t – so his wife was interested to learn what I did. I think she was a little disappointed that he’d become a desk pilot, but I laid it on about the irregular hours and she was pacified. They originated from Birmingham, so Scarborough was a culture shock, but they were loving it. She’d bought season tickets for the Stephen Joseph theatre and he was negotiating a share in a fishing boat.

  Next morning I spoke to the coroner on the phone and he was happy to release the body, on condition that the post-mortem findings concurred with the belief that she’d taken her own life. Rosie had left another envelope containing a will, although it was unwitnessed and not strictly legal. She appointed me as executor and, it could be argued, full beneficiary. I was to take what I wanted and sell the rest, the proceeds going to charity. I went down to the CPS office and had a word with one of the solicitors, but he had no experience in this field. He rang the Federation solicitor who was more familiar with civil law and in a better position to give advice. I took the phone and he made sucking noises through his teeth as I explained the circumstances to him. When I told him that I’d be happy with a small, valueless memento, he said we might get away with it, subject to no other will being found and the relatives not objecting.

  Dave arrived at about ten o’clock and brought me home. When he turned off the high street I said: ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Your house,’ he replied. ‘Where do you think?’

  ‘I want to go to the office.’

  ‘Mr Wood said I’ve to take you home. He doesn’t want to see you until Monday.’

  I’d had enough. Everybody, starting with Rosie, was deciding what was best for me. I said: ‘Listen, Dave. I’ll say this once and once only. I’ll take the rest of the day off and come in tomorrow. Tell everyone that I want no messages of sympathy, no hugs and no understanding looks. It’s back to business. I’m upset, Dave,’ I told him. ‘Of course I’m upset. I was fond of Rosie, wanted her in my life. But I’m angry, too. Suicide is a selfish act and I refuse to feel guilty. Rosie was ill. How ill we’ll never know, but it was her decision and I’m not letting her take me down with her. I wanted to help her but she wouldn’t let me. I tried, believe me, I tried.’ I looked out of the window at my house as he pulled up and reversed into the drive. ‘Sorry for sounding off, Dave,’ I said, ‘but that’s how I feel.’

  He pulled on the handbrake and tugged at his door handle. ‘C’mon,’ he said, ‘I’ll let you make me a pot of tea.’

  When he’d gone I put on my Gore-Tex coat, slung an old rucksack over one shoulder and walked all the way to Wicks DIY store, three miles away. I bought six tins of enamel paint in primary and secondary colours and put them in the sack. On the way home I purchased a salmon fillet, some ready-scraped new potatoes and a tin of peas. There was probably a tin in the cupboard but I wasn’t sure. It rained all the way back but I didn’t mind. I left the potatoes simmering while I had a shower, and grilled the fish in lashings of margarine. After that I watched one of the Kennedy videos that Dave had loaned me.

  At about nine o’clock I went into the garage and spread the two sheets of board on the floor. One was already white, so I painted the second one bright blue. I found an old half-inch brush that was worn out, dipped it in the yellow and started flicking.

  It pays to have a rough idea of what you are trying to achieve before you start. I wanted a blue focal point somewhere on the white board, and a green one, or possibly two, on the blue board. Or perhaps a green one and a red one. I’d see how it developed. You have to be prepared to adjust your vision of the finished product, go where the paint leads you.

  When both boards had an even distribution of yellow squiggles, splodges and dashes on them I switched to green and did it all again. Then it was black followed by red. I stood the boards against the wall, sat on my heels squinting at them for ten or fifteen minutes, then dipped into the yellow again and started all over. It’s not as easy as it looks. All the time you are making decisions: more emphasis here, less there, not too much of that colour. It’s all done by design and nothing is left to accident. Your mind is fully engaged, assessing the effects you are creating, balancing the colours and the depth of the coverage. And progress is painfully slow. You kneel next to the canvas, flicking paint, and as it goes from your hand to the painting it takes a little bit of you with it. It’s you on display with the finished work, not merely a pattern of colours and shapes. The final work has no subject, not even a focal point. It’s all about emotion and spirituality. The artist tears his soul out and puts it on the wall for all to see. That’s what the critics claim. Me? I just like doing them and think they look good.

  A single human cell is small.
Ten of them could stand on the sharp end of a pin and still leave room for a viruses picnic. But packed into every one of those cells, crushed and contorted, is over a metre of DNA. It must look a bit like a Jackson Pollock painting inside there, I thought.

  At midnight I made myself a mug of coffee and took the Rasta blaster into the garage, with Vaughan Williams on the CD deck. At half-past three I declared the paintings finished and went to bed.

  We do follow-up interviews. Not always, but we say we do. It’s a good excuse to go back and let a fresh pair of eyes and ears assess a witness. Or a suspect. Lloyd Lloyd Atkins were a firm of accountants with swish offices in Leeds. Atkins was long gone, but the two Lloyds were Crozier’s partners who had owned the Painted Pony nightclub. Nigel had spoken to them – they were associated with his case, not mine – but had learnt nothing, except that they were streetwise when it came to answering questions from a policeman. They were helpfulness itself, and answered his questions fulsomely, until it mattered. Then the shutters came down.

  The 1944 Education Act has a lot to answer for. Before then we had the criminal classes. After it, when education became a universal right and not the privilege of the wealthy, the top villains could recite Milton or large chunks of the periodic table, while the children of the aristocracy slowly sank into comfortable dottiness, where they belonged. The ones with criminal genes, the clever ones, got themselves an education and moved into the professions where the pickings were easy. They went where the money was.

  Two hundred years ago they’d have been highwaymen. A hundred years ago they might have stalked the streets of wherever armed with knobkerries to stun their unlucky victims. Nowadays their methods are less violent, more subtle and infinitely more rewarding. Paul and Desmond Lloyd said they could fit me in between clients on Saturday morning.

  Where once were factories for the making of locomotives and printing presses that moved the world, literally and emotionally, there are now shiny new brick and glass office blocks advertising millions of square feet of floorspace for today’s movers and shakers. Leeds has changed from being a manufacturing city into a centre for the service industries, whatever they are. I found Agincourt House, home of the headquarters of Lloyd Lloyd Atkins, and pressed the number I’d been given into the keypad. Normally there’s a front desk with a person manning it, but service industries don’t run to working Saturday mornings. I introduced myself to the voice coming from the hole in the wall and the gate slid back. ‘We’re on the third floor,’ the voice told me.

  They were good-looking lads, of about half my age. Identical twins, I realised, and they did nothing to allay the confusion that their similar appearances created: similar modest hairstyles; designer spectacles; blue suits and shirts; big cufflinks and identical tans. No doubt there were matching Porsches somewhere, with adjacent registration plates, and a pair of wives like glamorous animated bookends.

  After the introductions Desmond, or was it Paul, said: ‘Would it hurt, Inspector, if I left you in the capable hands of my brother? I’ve been invited for a game of squash and it’s so damn difficult to book a court on a Saturday. He knows everything I know.’

  I said: ‘To be honest, Mr Lloyd, it might even simplify things for me.’

  ‘Good show. I’ll be off then. See you tonight, Bro.’

  ‘I’ll bring the wine,’ his brother called after him.

  The office was all light oak, stainless steel and pot plants. The workstations were by DELL and everything matched and was cordless. Flat screens. They had flat screens, and they were big ones, too. We were in the inner sanctum, where the brothers worked. Outside, I’d hesitated for about a minute in a small waiting area adjacent to the receptionist’s office, furnished by Habitat and with a supply of up-market magazines. Yorkshire Life right through to Forbes magazine. OK, so the Forbes was six months old, probably picked up on an airliner by one of the twins, but it gave an insight into what life could be like for potential customers. I was sorry the receptionist wasn’t there. Receptionists can be a fertile source of information and gossip. Another door probably led to the office where any other staff worked. I assumed there would be other staff; I couldn’t imagine the Lloyd brothers toiling over balance sheets and cashflows at this stage in their careers.

  ‘Coffee, Inspector,’ Paul Lloyd asked. Or was it Desmond?

  ‘Um, no thanks. It’s Paul, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right, but I might deny it if pressed.’ He was smiling as he said it.

  ‘That could lead to an interesting point of law,’ I replied, returning the smile.

  We sat down at either side of his desk and he extracted a cellphone from a pocket. He inspected the display for a couple of seconds before switching the phone off and placing it back in the pocket. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Now, how can I help you?’

  ‘You were business partners of Joe Crozier,’ I began.

  ‘Poor old Joe. Yes, I suppose you could say that. Desmond and I held shares in a nightclub with Joe. The Painted Pony.’

  ‘How did that come about?’

  ‘We were his accountants. He opened this club in the old Alexander cinema, but it didn’t take off. It looked as if Joe might go bankrupt, but he had a good product, we thought. So we worked out a rescue package and put some capital into it. Eventually, when the Alexander was demolished, the opportunity arose to relocate to the Waterside Heights building. Joe lived there, so it was a great opportunity. We held equal shares and changed the name to Painted Pony. My wife thought of that one.’

  I remembered the Alex with affection. When I lived in Leeds I occasionally took a girlfriend there. We’d grab a double seat on the back row, and if my luck was in I wouldn’t see much of the film. That’s why I remembered reading about it, four or five years ago, when it burnt down. I wondered if arson was part of the rescue package that they’d worked out. It certainly looked like it.

  ‘What happens to Joe’s share?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s part of his estate. Depends who he’s left it to.’

  ‘I believe you’ve sold the club, haven’t you.’

  ‘That’s right. It was Joe’s baby, really. He lived on the job, got a kick out of sitting in the sound box at night, watching the chicks, as he called them. Desmond and I didn’t have much to do with it.’

  ‘But it was lucrative?’

  ‘It certainly was, but an offer came in and we decided to accept it. We weren’t looking forward to working with a new partner, whoever it was, and all the aggro that might ensue, so this way sewed things up neatly.’

  ‘Was it a good offer?’

  He sucked his cheeks in before answering. ‘It was a substantial sum, Inspector, but we could have done better. We just wanted it out of the way.’

  Interesting answer. They’d sold it for peanuts, at a guess, and he was torn between pretending he was happy with the price and having a little grumble about it.

  ‘So who is the new owner of the Painted Pony?’

  ‘A man called Peter Wallenberg. Do you know him?’

  ‘Yes. He’s just bought Heckley football club.’

  Lloyd looked puzzled, then pointed a finger at me. ‘I knew I’d seen you before,’ he declared. ‘You were at the do there three weeks ago.’

  ‘That’s right, but I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Well, it was a bit of a scrum.’ Enlightenment spread across his face like sunrise across the Serengeti. ‘You won the raffle,’ he recalled. ‘And your wife went up to collect the prize. Now I remember – my wife commented on how attractive she was, and I agreed. You won the signed shirt – you’re a lucky man, all round.’ He threw his head back and laughed. ‘Ha ha! What has she done with it? Used it to polish the kitchen floor?’

  No, she’s dead, I wanted to say. The beautiful, vivacious lady you saw me with is lying in a refrigerated drawer in Scarborough hospital mortuary. Instead, I said: ‘Weren’t you rather hasty in selling the club?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Wallenberg had made us several off
ers, and we’d discussed them between ourselves. It was usually Joe who didn’t want to sell, and although we out-voted him we were content to keep the club. As I said, it was Joe’s baby.’

  ‘His final offer,’ I began. ‘Was it made after Joe died?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘How do you think Joe died?’

  ‘He fell in the river. He was drunk, went for a wander in the dark.’

  ‘Are you scared of Wallenberg?’

  ‘Scared of him? No.’

  ‘Are you sure he didn’t make you an offer you couldn’t refuse, as they say in films?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  It was like Nigel had said: the shutters were down. Up to now he’d been chatty and cooperative, but when his answers counted he was evasive. He could have said: ‘Scared of Wallenberg? Why should I be scared of him? We have a drink together sometimes, have a laugh. Old Pete’s a business acquaintance, wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ But he didn’t. He just said no. And the same with Joe and the river. He could have told me how dangerous it was, how Joe was in the habit of going for a midnight stroll, or feeding the ducks, or sailing model yachts on the tainted waters of the River Aire, but, again, he just said the bare minimum. Joe was drunk, end of story.

  I said: ‘Have you ever met Tony Krabbe?’

  He jumped to his feet, saying: ‘Would you like to change your mind about that coffee, Inspector?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks.’

  ‘Do you mind if I have one?’ He disappeared into the reception area, leaving me alone with all those computers and filing cabinets. I should have leapt up and rifled through them, opening drawers, playing tunes on the mouse, until, a split second before he reappeared, the exact document I was looking for, the one that incriminated the villains, fell into my hands. That’s what I should have done. Instead, I sat and watched the pigeons wheeling over the glistening rooftops of south Leeds.