Evil Turn (Nathan Hawk Mystery)

by Watkinson, Douglas

  I turned the key, did a rocky three-point turn, and drove away.

  And another thing: it used to be that when you arrived at the edge of a town, you pulled in somewhere and checked a local map to find exactly where you were going. Or, God forbid, you asked a local. Now you keep listening to a disembodied voice on a GPS and it takes you right there. I was looking for the postcode which had stuck in Petra Fairchild’s mind, DN31 7SY, The Amethyst, and quite reasonably I’d expected to find a stone-built, pokey little dockside pub, weathered trawlermen seated at the bar, with accents so impenetrable I’d need a crowbar to understand them.

  But after winding through a wasteland of disused warehouses, separated by acres of broken concrete through which grass and weeds were making their comeback, I arrived at my destination. The satnav had taken me to the estuary side of Fish Dock, more a marina these days than a working dock, with access at each end to the mighty River Humber. A few sad-looking trawlers were tied up there, paint peeling, tar flaking, victims of the pernicious quota system. Alongside them was The Amethyst, an old cargo packet with the guts ripped out of her, replaced by a state-of-the-art kitchen, a bar and thirty tables. It was also a food bank for hundreds of gulls, screaming and wheeling as they waited for the leftovers.

  I parked alongside a handful of middle-range Audis and Mercs which told me most of what I needed to know about the people on board having lunch. The men would be jacket and shirt, no tie, mid-thirties and monied: the women would be young professionals, dressed in their success with expensive hair and body parts that didn’t move. I turned a few heads as I went aboard, heads belonging to the brave couples who were up on deck sipping drinks at wooden tables, defying the onshore breeze and that tang of raw sewage that comes with enclosed water.

  As I reached the bottom of the stairs, a man the size and shape of a small planet came over to me. Kristian, his name tag said, and he clearly wished I was three or four people, not just one, wanting lunch. He showed me to a faraway table and I ordered a double scotch in a tall glass with ice to the brim. He checked that I’d meant what I’d asked for and went to get it. As he turned I was able to read the quotation on the back of his black shirt, the company livery. It was a favourite of mine, one that I often use as an excuse for poking my nose into other people’s business. ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Edmund Burke.’ Quite a mouthful to get on the back of a shirt, but then it was a big shirt.

  A young lad, name tag Rob, brought my drink and a menu. I chose posh fish and chips. Coals to Newcastle, really, but what the hell. He was a skinny kid but the back of his shirt read: ‘Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. Oscar Wilde.’

  As I sipped my drink I sussed out the waitress who seemed to be the chattiest and eventually called her over.

  “Yes, sir. Can I help?”

  “Tina, hi! What does it say on your back, by the way?”

  To my surprise, she knew. “ ‘A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in. Frederick the Great.’ ”

  “I like that.” Her big smile was still asking if she could help. “Does an Emma Jago work here?”

  “No, but there’s Emma Wesley.”

  Some would say I deserved the break; I say I should’ve done my research, at least dug out some basic info about the trawlermen’s wives. It might not have taken me straight to Emma Jago and Emma Wesley being one and the same person, but it would’ve forced me to check.

  No matter. Here I was in the same room as Vic’s widow and the questions were forming a disorderly queue. Why had she changed her name, how much did she know about the murders, was she due to give evidence at the Flaxman trial, why had Liam Kinsella sent her a birthday card and was that her walking over to my table, the company smile on her face? It was a hard but well cared for face, black hair tied back to keep it out of the food. The eyes were sharp, intelligent, dead-giveaway eyes, so I banked on getting the truth from her.

  “Emma, this gentleman was asking...” Tina began.

  “Emma Jago or Wesley?” I said, rising and stretching out a hand.

  She stopped, like someone crossing a dance floor and suddenly hearing the wrong music.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  For some reason I’d expected watered-down Geordie accents from everyone, but what I’d heard so far were more Moss Side than Tyneside. Apart from the Small Planet, Kristian, who was all-purpose Scandinavian.

  “My name’s Nathan Hawk and your next question’ll be ‘What do you want?’ ”

  She gestured for me to answer it.

  “Why did Liam Kinsella send you a birthday card and present?”

  Kristian was moving towards us, aware of a problem. He in turn beckoned to a bloke behind the bar, who side-vaulted the counter and joined his boss. The waiter Rob went to the kitchen door, opened it a fraction and called to someone named Josh. He turned out to be the chef and he’d forgotten to put down his chopping knife before joining us.

  An old Desk Sergeant once told me it was the threat of violence, not the violence itself, that lay at the heart of controlling a situation. It was wisdom based on experience, but was now going to be ‘the exception that proved the rule’? Cicero, I think, but not embroidered on anything I was wearing. Trouble was, there was one of me, five of them and rising as a couple of young men left their table and came to join the party.

  I reached out and picked up one of those foot-tall, wooden salt grinders from my table and suddenly realised what they were intended for, because they’re no bloody good at grinding salt. I held it truncheon-style, slapping the end into my other hand.

  “The first one into my space gets his head broken.”

  The waiter Rob laughed.

  “You think that’s funny?”

  He withered, instantly. The Vaulting Barman looked at his boss for permission to beat the crap out of me but Kristian didn’t give it.

  “I think you should leave,” he said.

  “I’ve only just got here.”

  “Fucking salt cellar?” said Josh the chef. “You’ve got to be joking!”

  “Thing is, Josh, I know exactly where to bring this down, maximum effect. They used to teach us stuff like that. I doubt if you know how or where to stab me to make any real difference.”

  He looked down at his hand and seemed surprised to find that he had a lethal weapon in it. He appeared to weigh up the pros and cons of using it, all the while conscious of my salt grinder. Then a voice called into the silence.

  “Josh, don’t do anything daft, love.” It was Emma Jago, arms out, patting down the hot air that had risen. “Please, boys, cool it.”

  “You heard her,” I said, my eye on the knife. “Step back.”

  It was all the excuse Josh needed to retreat, a pace or two at first and then right back to the kitchen. To this day I think he was more frightened by what he might have done with the knife than ever he was of me. I can live with that.

  The Small Planet turned to the troops he’d mustered, thanked them and they drifted away back to the bar, back to their places.

  “What do you want, Mr Hock?” said Kristian.

  “You to pronounce my name properly. Hawk. Then I want to ask Emma a few questions.”

  “Are you copper?”

  I shook my head. “Solid brass, mate.”

  “Then you...”

  Emma butted in. “Kristian, thanks, but can you give me ten minutes with this gentleman?”

  He eventually said, “Call if you need.”

  As he walked off, Emma sat down opposite me.

  “Jago?” I asked.

  “Maiden name.”

  “Not Wesley because of the smuggling charges against you...?”

  “Because of my murdered husband,” she said, wearily. “I’m sick of people’s sympathy. Here I’m just Emma.”

  “Emma whose back says?”

  “ ‘If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts. Anonymous.’ ”

  I smiled. �
��Some copper will’ve written that. Where’s Kristian from?”

  “Oslo.”

  “That’s just across the Baltic from Liepaja, where your husband and his crew picked up 15 million quid’s worth of heroin.”

  Her stillness was natural, not forced. “Is it?”

  “And you still haven’t told me why Liam Kinsella sent you a card and present.”

  “Because it was my birthday and he knows how much I miss Vic. Liam’s a very sweet guy. And brave.”

  “That’s the last thing I’d have called...”

  “Listen, I don’t know who you are, and I don’t much care, but can you imagine the guts it must’ve taken to turn on Aaron? I hope they hack off his balls and lock him up forever!”

  “I’ve never met Aaron. I only met Liam Kinsella three weeks ago.”

  The waiter Rob emerged from the kitchen with my posh fish and chips and came over. I leaned back as he put the plate down in front of me.

  “Any sauces? Another drink?” he asked, quietly. I shook my head and he turned to go. I called him back. “Sir?”

  I picked up a fork, turned over the chips on the plate, stabbed one and said to him, “Eat that.”

  The request brought out his stammer. “I couldn’t, we don’t...”

  “You don’t like chips?”

  “It’s not that, it’s, it’s, it’s...”

  “It’s more what Josh has cooked them in, specially for me? Bodily fluids? Take it back to the kitchen, son, tell Josh I’ll be in later to push the whole lot, plate and all, down his throat.”

  His hand shaking, Rob picked up the plate and went back to the kitchen.

  I turned back to Emma. “You were the one who brought Flaxman into the firm. You must’ve liked him to begin with. What changed your mind?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t say I liked him; he just had a bloody good idea for getting us out of the red.”

  “No sign of what he was capable of?”

  “He had a temper, yes, but so do I. Reckoned himself as an alpha male but I wouldn’t have said he was a killer. Then again, what do murderers look like?” She paused. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  I reminded her that two minutes ago she hadn’t cared who I was. I told her I worked for the man who would put Flaxman in prison for a very long time. She wanted to know my employer’s name. I saw no harm in telling her he was called Henry Sillitoe, the CPS solicitor.

  “So you’re like some ... private investigator?”

  “Right. Your sister was married to Freddie Trent...”

  She leaped right in, big sister protecting the little one. “Don’t go bothering her. She’ll tell you the same thing I will, anyway.”

  “At least tell me her name.”

  She laughed. “If you don’t know that, you don’t know much at all...”

  “Sarah?”

  She flared. “If you bloody knew, why ask?”

  “Pure guesswork. Emma and Sarah were two names that often went together, daughters of a certain generation. What are you, early forties?”

  It works five times out of ten. “I’m thirty-bloody-four!”

  “So she’ll be thirty-one, thirty-two? Too much to hope you’ll tell me her address. I mean I know she’s an ex-teacher, used to do a bit of smuggling on the side, charges pending presumably...”

  “Our husbands did the smuggling.”

  “Heap it all on them, eh, now they’re dead? Christ, you’ll tell me next you didn’t know about the heroin.”

  She leaned forward and stared at me. “If you’re such a clever bugger, look right in my face and tell me if I’d bring in stuff that would kill kids.”

  “Booze and fags kill. You brought in plenty of that.”

  She sat back in the chair and looked at me with undiluted scorn. “Don’t go all righteous on me. D’you know how many trawlers were registered in Grimsby, 1960, when Vic’s dad went to sea? Seven hundred. Today? Eight!”

  “All the more fish to catch for those who stuck it out.”

  “Oh, fuck off! I’m done.”

  She rose and, despite her anger, checked to see if she’d left anything. She even placed the chair back under the table before she walked off. I toyed with the idea of visiting the kitchen but decided against. I was forgiving my enemy and, according to Oscar, it would piss him off thoroughly.

  - 11 -

  I gave Grimsby the once-over before going back to the hotel at Wragby. I even took a guided tour up the Dock Tower, iron spiral staircase all the way. A guide who wouldn’t have known the head of a fish from its tail gave an exaggerated history of the building and told us not to lean over the edge, if and when we reached the top.

  The Humber estuary dominated the view, container ships and ferries to Europe on the horizon. Closer in there was the beach, made of sludge and plastic bottles, with leggy wooden piers jutting out into the water but to no purpose these days. Below me was The Amethyst, none the worse for my lunchtime visit, and the dozen or so docks near to it were either marinas for middle-income yachts or plain empty.

  I went down again feeling quite depressed and walked into town for the lunch I’d never had. Away from the docks it might’ve been any one of countless struggling towns in Britain. The big names were there, of course, nipping at people’s wallets – Tesco, Marks & Sparks, Shell. High-rise had replaced low terraces, shopping malls had put paid to corner shops, business parks had sprouted where factories once flourished. Christ, I don’t just sound like my father, I am my father. Except in one particular. He was a peaceable man, which proves I’ve inherited at least one character trait from my mother. I was still dwelling on Josh and whatever it was he’d slipped into my posh fish and chips.

  While they were alive, Vic and Freddie had a certain amount of privacy, enough to enable them to go smuggling for a couple of years without being caught. The moment they died they became public property. Every detail about them could be found on the internet, and I don’t just mean their dirty laundry. Back at the hotel it took me three minutes to find Freddie’s, and therefore Sarah’s, address. A report in The Grimsby Echo told me it was a house in Freshney Terrace, Scartho Top. Admittedly it didn’t give a number, but sure as hell there was a photo and the solar panel in the roof marked it out.

  I browsed further, one link leading to another, until I came full circle back to The Grimsby Echo and a weekly column by a woman called Angelica Carter. The main thing about her was her sympathy towards Emma and her sister, not in a series of journalistic platitudes, but something meatier. She warned her fellow reporters against jumping to conclusions, revelling in the horror, beating the story senseless while forgetting that two young women had lost their husbands suddenly and violently. She spoke in the same vein elsewhere, in the paper, on her blog and evidently on local radio. I logged the name away, or maybe it was the face, the passport-size photo at the top of her column. Middle-aged, hatchety, glasses, hair permed tight to the head. A script signature after every piece, ‘Angelica Carter’.

  Scartho Top was south of Grimsby, and 17 Freshney Terrace was in a run of eighties new-builds. It was being lived in but nobody was there today. There was mail on the floor the other side of the wrinkled glass, but with no easy access to the back of the place I decided to wait for the occupant’s return.

  I leaned back on the Land Rover and sipped a lukewarm coffee, tried to collate what I’d learned yesterday and today. There wasn’t much that added to the evidence Sillitoe already had, but I was starting to get the feeling that I’d missed something, that I’d seen it but it hadn’t registered. It jagged at me, every half hour or so, flicking me behind the ear like a kid in the desk behind at school. I tried to work on it. Dump site or kill site? I found myself sidetracked, critical of the quick and easy use of those two phrases, their virtual lack of any meaning. Men had been killed, for God’s sake, women had lost husbands, parents their children, children fathers, and then they’d been disposed of like so much garbage and left to rot...

  I’d turned to get b
ack into the driving seat when a lady who’d been supervising a small child in a front garden, a couple of doors down, called to me in the nearest thing to a regional accent I’d heard since arriving. She didn’t exactly call me ‘bonny lad’, but I’m not sure that I wanted her to.

  “If you’re looking for Sarah, she’s gone to the new house.”

  “Right,” I said, in a ‘forgetful old fool’ kind of way. “D’you know where it is?”

  “Near her dad’s in Scotland, I think. My husband helped her load some of the heavy stuff into the van: washing machine, dryer, sofa. Even offered to drive there with her...” She shook her head, puckered face. “Since Freddie she’s found it very difficult. Their first house.”

  I was nodding as if I knew the whole story. “Rest of the furniture...?”

  “She’ll be back for that. Till then she’s asked me to feed the tarantula. Give it a cricket every other day.”

  From the expression on her face she wasn’t looking forward to the task, but it meant she had a key to the house. Could I find a way of getting her to let me in for a poke around? Sarah’s sister didn’t want me to meet her, so maybe she knew something useful. If she did, though, the police would’ve known it too. Perhaps I should go back to The Amethyst, make up with Emma, then drop into the local nick, fire a few more questions at Carew and his boys...?

  I could’ve carried on re-jigging my agenda till kingdom come in the feeble hope that whatever I’d missed might reveal itself. Instead, I decided to go home.

  - 12 -

  It was early evening when I drove onto the gravel beneath the big beech and I could’ve sworn I heard a tensing of muscles from within the house as they braced themselves for my arrival. It was wishful thinking.

  Grogan, in an apron, was making supper, following a recipe from Mrs Beeton’s Cookbook. The woman was flawless, professional and long dead, but he still had a beef with her. This wasn’t the way his mother had made shepherd’s pie, but she was dead too so he couldn’t ask her. Dead or alive, right or wrong, it would be ready in fifty minutes. From the living room I heard Fairchild laugh. I went through to see what was so funny.