Dusty Death

by J M Gregson

  An alarming thought gnawed its way into the back of Lucy’s mind. ‘You’re surely not saying that you expected me to – to propose to you?’

  Percy gave the slightest of nods at the now empty bowl in front of him. ‘February the twenty-ninth, yesterday, weren’t it, our Lucy?’

  She loved the way he dropped into Lancashire talk for their most intimate moments. Loved the way he thought that it would be presumptuous for him to propose marriage to her. Loved the way that he had hoped she would take advantage of the date that came only once every four years to propose to him. Loved Percy Peach and everything he meant in her life.

  Bloody’ell, Norah.

  ‘Wally Swift. Been looking for you for quite some time. In the deep doodoos, aren’t you? The very deep doodoos.’

  That thought obviously afforded Percy Peach deep satisfaction. He switched on the cassette recorder and announced that the interview with Walter Arthur Swift was beginning at 0912, with DCI Peach and DS Blake in attendance. ‘Expect you’ll want your brief here for this.’

  ‘No. Nothing for a brief to do. I’ve been fitted up.’ Swift knew the form. You said nothing. If the barons thought you were worth the effort, they’d make sure you had a lawyer, in due course. The best. Meantime, you kept shtum. It was more than your life was worth to name names, especially from anywhere higher up the chain. With luck, and a good brief in court, you’d get a hefty fine or a short custodial sentence for dealing.

  All three of them in that warm cell of an interview room knew the score. They would all go through the motions, utter their well-rehearsed lines, and then he would be taken back to his cell and left there, whilst they struggled unsuccessfully to get more evidence against him, a better idea of the chain above and below him. That bastard Mike Allen had trapped him, but he surely couldn’t know enough to get the big boys. It was a bloody nuisance, but these buggers couldn’t touch the million and more that Wally Swift had stashed away in off-shore funds. There was nothing they could do about that.

  Percy Peach was about to surprise him.

  ‘Best thing you can do is to be perfectly frank with us, Mr Swift. I don’t expect you’ll see it like that, but that doesn’t worry me. I’ll be quite pleased to hang a man like you out to dry.’ Peach gave him a first smile, a dazzling of white teeth against the dull green of the room’s walls.

  ‘I was fitted up. You Drugs Squad blokes are at it all the time. Surprised you think you can still—’

  ‘Not Drugs Squad, this, Wally. Mr Swift.’ Peach managed to convey a sneer on what seemed a routine repetition of the surname. ‘Drugs Squad will probably have a go at you when we’ve finished. After you’ve been hung out to dry.’

  Swift had been determined to play it cool, to let nothing ruffle him. He’d dealt with plenty of pigs before, knew their tactics in interviews. But now he was shaken. This man was changing the rules, before they’d even started. And he looked so smug, so confident. It was years since anyone had called him Wally; he would not have thought it possible that a single word could be so unnerving, but it seemed to have happened. He said aggressively, ‘No one hangs Walter Swift out to dry, Chief Inspector.’ He tried to get the same kind of sneer into the title that Peach had visited upon his name, but he couldn’t quite bring it off.

  ‘Sounds like a challenge, that, Wally.’ He turned to the woman at his side. ‘Wouldn’t you say that sounded like a challenge, DS Blake?’

  ‘It did to me, sir, yes. A very ill-advised challenge, in view of the evidence we’ve gathered over the last week.’ She gave the man on the other side of the table a different kind of smile from Peach’s, the sympathetic smile reserved by nurses for those disappearing to the theatre for serious surgery.

  Swift was already regretting not having a brief. But it would be a climb-down to ask for one now. And Walter Swift did not do climb-downs. Another mistake.

  He said, ‘I’ve issued no challenges. I’m here on a trumped-up charge of dealing drugs.’

  ‘Correction. The very serious drugs charge will be dealt with in due course, by the relevant officers. Who happily know a lot more about your organization than you think they do.’ Peach smiled happily at the ceiling and nodded a couple of times on that thought. Then his smile vanished abruptly as he said, ‘We’re here to talk about something much more interesting, Wally. Murder.’

  ‘Murder?’ Even for a man as steeped in criminality as Swift, the word carried a grisly glamour which stilled his tongue.

  ‘The murder of Sunita Akhtar.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of her.’ But he felt the colour draining from his face, even as he kept his brown eyes resolutely on Peach’s black and sparkling pupils.

  ‘Mistake, that, Wally. Another mistake. Her name’s been all over the papers for the last week. Of course you’ve heard of her. But let’s play your game and refresh your memory. You lived under the same roof as Sunita Akhtar for at least six months, at twenty-six Sebastopol Terrace, Brunton, during the winter and spring of 1990 and 1991. Are you denying that?’

  ‘Well, what if I did? You can’t go—’

  ‘At the end of which period, she was murdered.’ Peach nodded happily, as if ticking off another stage in the assembly of a cast-iron case.

  ‘I can’t be expected to remember what happened in 1991 in Brunton. It’s a long time ago.’

  ‘They all start off by saying that. But it’s surprising how much comes back to them, when they think seriously about those months. When they’re trying to avoid a murder rap and give us the man who really killed Sunita.’

  Swift found himself licking his lips. He didn’t fancy asking who these others were, finding out exactly how many of the inmates of that squat where it had all started for him they had been able to find. And what they’d told these two smug pigs about him. ‘I didn’t kill that Paki girl.’

  This time Peach allowed his grin to develop into a chuckle. He had to shake his head over the silliness of it all. ‘You won’t expect us to accept your word on that, though, will you, Wally? Not a man with your vast experience of police procedure.’

  ‘What happened to “Innocent until Proved Guilty”?’

  Peach shook his head sadly. ‘Indeed, what happened to that, Wally? Nice idea put about by the lawyers, I think. Funny buggers, lawyers. Don’t suppose the idea ever had much clout, for blokes like you.’

  Swift wished again that he’d gone for the brief when he’d had the chance. He was sure this cocky little bantam of a policeman wouldn’t have got away with this attitude, with a brief around. He said doggedly, ‘I can just about remember those days in the squat. I can just about remember the Paki girl, but I didn’t kill her.’

  Peach nodded happily, as if this was exactly the line he had expected. ‘Twenty-six Sebastopol Terrace, Brunton. Unlawfully occupied as a squat on a regular basis by you, Wally Swift, and by five other people.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘All of whom we have now interviewed. Just needed you to complete the set, you see, Wally. And you walked obligingly into our hands. Well, into the hands of the Drugs Squad, to be strictly accurate. But murder takes precedence even over serious drugs charges, so here we are.’ He smiled widely and happily at that situation.

  ‘I don’t know what these other people have told you, but—’

  ‘Quite a lot, Wally, as a matter of fact. Quite a lot about you, too. It’s been most illuminating, hasn’t it, DS Blake?’

  ‘Very illuminating indeed, sir. I felt I almost knew Mr Swift, long before this meeting.’

  Peach nodded happily. ‘That’s the advantage of our organization and our methods, you see, Wally. We plod along – get criticized for plodding, at times – but it produces surprising results. We know, for example, that you were deep into criminal activity, even in those days.’

  ‘And who told you that?’

  Another chuckle from Peach. ‘You wouldn’t expect us to reveal that, Wally, would you?’ He leaned forward. ‘But now’s your chance to tell us about the others in that
squat. Get yourself off the hook. If you think that’s possible.’

  Walter Swift looked at him with a face full of hate. But hate didn’t help you to think. To think rationally. That was what he needed to do, in this situation. He was surely a match for any plod. He said, ‘There weren’t just the people in the squat, you know. There were others came next door. One other, anyway. And he knew Sunita Akhtar.’

  ‘Good, Wally. That’s good. You see, you’re remembering things already about Sebastopol Terrace. Obscure things, like who came next door occasionally. You wouldn’t by any chance be trying to divert our attention away from what went on at number twenty-six, would you?’

  ‘He was trying to get that girl to work for him.’ Swift furrowed his brow and pretended to think. ‘Edmonds, he was called. Dave Edmonds. You should talk to him. He tried to get that girl to sell drugs for him, if I remember right.’

  Peach regarded these efforts with some distaste. ‘We have talked to Edmonds, Wally. We have a statement from him.’

  Swift was shaken for a moment. He wondered just how much this cocksure little sod did know. If it was true that he was the last of those who had lived in the squat to be interviewed, perhaps his card was already marked. Perhaps they were wanting to hear him condemn himself out of his own mouth. He said, ‘If she wouldn’t work for that Edmonds or went back on her word, he could have killed her for that. People dealing drugs don’t mess about.’

  He wished he hadn’t spoken those last words, as soon as they were out. Peach grinned delightedly. ‘Good motive, that. Only snag with it is that it applies to you as well, Wally. I think it sits better on you, though. You had already established a trade in drugs, and Edmonds was stepping on to your patch. If he poached a girl who was one of your pushers, I wouldn’t like to have been in her shoes.’ He spoke as if testing the theory to see how it sounded, then nodded approvingly. ‘I like that. It’s quite convincing, to me. Not going to confess, are you, Wally?’

  ‘Of course I’m not bloody confessing!’ But the motive had indeed sounded terribly convincing as this odious adversary had outlined it, all the same. Wally said desperately, ‘There were others in that squat, you know. Others who might have done it. There was that wanker Matty, for a start!’

  Peach turned to the woman at his side. ‘Memories are coming tumbling back to him now, aren’t they, DS Blake?’

  ‘Almost miraculously, sir, when he’s prompted a little. Just like all the others were, isn’t he?’

  ‘Indeed he is. All coming back to him now, isn’t it? Liars need good memories, you know. Some sod in the seventeenth century said that, and it’s still just as true today.’

  These two were dancing mental rings around him when he needed to think. Swift said, ‘That bloke Matty was Sunita’s boyfriend, before she threw him over for the dyke. He was bloody annoyed about that. Might have killed her, I’d say.’

  ‘Would you indeed, Wally? Well, I can’t say that that surprises me. Any other gems to offer us?’

  Swift wondered what Matty Hayward had said about him, whether he had offered them anything which might be damning. He said furiously, ‘There were two other women there as well as Sunita, you know. There was the dyke – I think she was called Jo – and a blonde bint.’ He found himself dropping back into the words he had used all those years ago. Well, that probably wasn’t a bad thing. It might give authenticity to what he was saying. ‘Emmy. She was a hard piece, Emmy. She was tarting, even then, even from that squat. She’d have been capable of killing the girl, if it suited her.’

  That was an opinion Peach had already formed himself, after speaking to Emily Jane Watson. But he forced incredulity into his tone as he said to Swift, ‘And why on earth should it suit her to kill an innocent girl like that, Wally?’

  Swift’s eyes narrowed; his mouth pinched with the craftiness of a criminal fighting to save his own skin. ‘I reckon she’d tried to recruit the Paki to sell it on the streets. Emmy was after starting her own whorehouse, if you ask me. She was done for it a couple of years later, you know.’

  ‘We do, actually. We’ve talked to the lady about it. And about lots of other things, including you, Wally.’

  ‘Well, if Sunita refused to work for her, or threatened to grass on her, she wouldn’t have taken kindly to that. Not Emmy.’

  ‘You’re saying now that Emily Watson killed Sunita?’ Peach made it sound quite ludicrous, as if it damned this man even further rather than got him off the hook.

  Swift said sullenly, ‘All I’m saying is that Emmy was a woman well capable of killing, if you got on the wrong side of her. And so was the dyke. They get very involved, you know, dykes. Turn very nasty if their partners decide they’ve had enough.’

  ‘Really? Well, it’s good to hear from an authority on these things.’ Peach nodded absently for a couple of seconds and then snapped, ‘Did you kill her, Wally?’

  Swift was shaken: he had been busy devising motives for others, and the pig had caught him by surprise. ‘Of course I didn’t!’

  ‘No of course about it, Wally. A known criminal, who’s just been arrested on a very serious charge. Who’s going down for a stretch anyway, before we even consider him for murder. Wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, I’m afraid.’ Peach pursed his lips and whistled noiselessly, then shook his head sadly. ‘You wouldn’t like to make a clean breast of it now? They tell me that confession provides a huge relief. The greater the crime, the better the relief, presumably.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Sunita Akhtar.’

  ‘All right. Interview terminated at 0940 hours.’ He switched off the recorder. ‘The Drugs Squad officers will bring you out of your cell again in due course. Give you quite a going over, I should think. Not all policemen are as civilized as me. But you’d know that, with your record.’

  They played the tape back again, when Swift had been taken away. At the end of it, Percy looked at Lucy Blake with his head on one side. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think he’s scum. I’d like it to be him.’

  ‘Doesn’t always work like that, though. On the whole, he wriggled just as I’d have thought he would. There was one interesting thing, though.’

  ‘And what was that, oh master?’

  ‘He tried to implicate everyone else around him, as you might expect of a man in his position. Even brought in the man who wasn’t in the squat, David Edmonds. But he left out one candidate. Billy Warnock. I wonder why.’

  Twenty

  This place didn’t smell of death, as she had expected it to. It was full of smiling faces, of people who carried a joy with them which she seldom saw in her life outside this building.

  Emily Jane Watson waited in the corridor outside the room on the upright, uncomfortable chair someone had brought for her. Probably they thought she had a parent in here. She had never been in a hospice before. She was discovering that it was one of the few places which could still make her feel uncomfortable.

  Through six inches of gap in the doorway, she watched the movements of the woman beside the bed, watched in particular the actions of her powerful hands. She muttered low words of consolation as she turned the thin body beneath the blankets, dabbing the ointment on to the bedsores with a touch as light as a butterfly’s wing. When she had finished her ministrations, she tucked the clean white sheet expertly under the patient’s chin and smiled down at him.

  Jane was surprised to see that this was a man, with thin grey hair cut neatly above his exhausted, emaciated features. He said something to his nurse, his voice no stronger than a whisper, so that she had to put her ear above his mouth to get the sense of it. Then she smiled down at him, nodded, lifted an impossibly thin arm from beneath the blankets, and lodged the skeletal hand between her strong ones.

  At first there was no sound from the pair, just a gentle rhythmic swaying from the strong figure in blue on the edge of the bed. Then a thin vein of melody arose from the pair, the soft keening of a tune Jane Watson vaguely recognized from the dead, forgotten days she had spe
nt with the grandfather who had died when she was twelve.

  ‘Kathleen Mavourneen! What, slumbering still?

  Oh hast thou forgotten how soon we must sever?

  Oh hast thou forgotten this day we must part?

  It may be for years, and it may be for ever,

  Oh why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart?’

  It was softly sung, even as it gathered towards its emotional climax, and Jane strained her ears to catch the words. The thin reed of the voice from the bed rose with a strange power as the lines proceeded, whilst the voice from the woman who held his hand blended so softly and gently with it that from the corridor it was difficult to distinguish from whom the sound was coming.

  When it was over, the nurse looked tenderly down at the closed eyes on the immobile face for a moment, reflected the slight smile on the bloodless lips with an answering one of her own, and slid the hand she had clasped so lightly back beneath the sheet. She waited for a moment, making sure that the paper-thin eyelids were not about to open again, then stole softly away from the bed.

  Jane, standing hastily as the woman she had waited for came through the doorway, wished suddenly that she had not witnessed this tiny musical interlude, that she had not intruded on anything so private and so intimate. But instead of apologizing, she found herself saying with uncharacteristic tenderness, ‘That was beautiful!’

  It was banal, but it was sincere, and the woman in blue accepted it as such. ‘He used to sing it to his wife when they were young,’ she said, her voice surprisingly matter-of-fact in explanation. ‘She’s been dead for twenty years and more, but we all go back to our youth in the last days.’