The Amen Cadence

by J. J. Salkeld

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘That’s what Mr. Pope has told you to say, isn’t it? And don’t worry, we’ll take the ‘no comment’ on that one as read, shall we? Otherwise we’ll all disappear into the bloody hall of mirrors in a minute, with your ‘no comments’ bouncing around the spot for ever and a day. But you’ve been let down here, Micky, badly let down. It’s almost as if you’re disposable to your bosses, just cannon fodder, like. Because we all know what’s happened, I’m afraid. You didn’t bash Linda Thompson’s head in with a piece of pipe, it’s obvious, is that. No, you were just the driver. So why didn’t they give you a ringer to use? A nicked car, on cloned plates? Easy-peasy. Christ, Dai Young has no end of car thieves in his little gang. That and a gallon of four star in the boot and you’d have been fine. So why didn’t he make sure that you were properly protected, eh?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘All right, not to worry. We’re almost done here. You’ll be bailed, but in a few hours, maybe a day or two, you will be charged. Please be in no doubt about that. And if you don’t give up the bloke who committed the murder, and we don’t catch him, then you’ll be all alone in the dock, and that’s the loneliest place in the whole wide world, believe you me. I expect Mr. Pope has told you that this will all go away if you just hang tough, but it won’t, Micky. Because we both know you were there, and we will be able to prove it, soon enough. Your mates have just thrown you under the bus here, son. That’s all there is to it.’

  Pepper sat back, and for a moment didn’t even register the words that Micky Thompson spoke. She was expecting a final ‘no comment’, to round out the set of a hundred and fifty or so.

  ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘I did it. It was me.’

  ‘We need a break’, said Pope, putting his hand on Micky’s arm.

  ‘You certainly do,’ said Pepper, going through the protocol fast, before she turned off the tape. She wasn’t absolutely certain how she felt about Micky’s sudden change of heart, but she was pretty sure that it wasn’t happy.

  While she was waiting for Pope she tried to clean a few of the mugs properly, but the tannin stains hung on grimly. Pepper hated the times like these, when nasty, guilty-as-sin cons were getting advice from people who should know better, or who - if she was feeling charitable - really believed that they were helping to ensure that justice was served. But, from where she was standing, that was very rarely the case. And it never was when Simon Pope was involved. So she expected a long wait, but she and Henry only had to hang about in the corridor and the little kitchen for ten minutes before Pope came out and called them back in.

  The tape rolled, and then the boy confessed, listing every detail of the murder run as Pepper prompted him. But whenever she moved beyond the killing itself, the boy stonewalled solidly.

  ‘Were you alone in the car?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And did you commit the offence alone? Did you strike Linda Taylor with that length of scaffold pole?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Again, for the tape, please. A little louder.’

  ‘Yes. I did it.’

  ‘And why did you do it?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Had you ever met Linda Taylor before?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Eventually even Pepper tired of the question and no answer routine, and she looked up at the clock on the wall. They were due a meal break in five minutes anyway.

  ‘Look, Micky, you do know that we don’t believe you, right? For sure, you’re going to prison for a long time because of this, but that was going to happen anyway. And if you think that this little pantomime is going to stop us from keeping after the other bloke who was in your dad’s car with you, and from him connecting the offence back to whoever ordered it, then you’ve got another thing coming. We’re going to find him, Micky, and this little charade will all be for nothing.’

  ‘No,’ said Micky Thompson, almost loudly, ‘no, you won’t find him. Because there wasn’t anyone else with me in the car. I was alone, like I said. And I’m not saying any more, so get on and charge me. Mr. Pope says that you can’t interview me again after that. He says that you’re a loose cannon, but the cops down in Birmingham will take the conviction gratefully, and after that it’ll be case closed. Not a bloody thing you can do about it, he says.’

  Afterwards, when the civilian custody staff had arrived to take Micky Thompson off to the remand wing at Lancaster, Pepper escorted Pope to the front door. Henry knew, instinctively, that it would be prudent to walk with them, otherwise there was always the risk that Pope would defy gravity and fall up the stairs, where his face would doubtless bounce off Pepper’s small, but effective, fists.

  The three of them didn’t say anything until they were in the large, glass fronted reception area, like something from an upwardly mobile estate agent’s head office, and Pope turned to shake Pepper’s hand.

  ‘Brave lad’, he said, ‘owning up like that.’

  ‘Brave? Are you out of your fucking mind? He and his mate beat a young woman to death, and now that stupid kid is going to do twenty odd years because he’s shit scared of Dai Young. But we both know that Young will be gone, one way or another, before Thompson has even spent his first Christmas inside. But you’ll be all right, won’t you, Mr. Pope? Because you’ll have banked Young’s cheque long before this all goes sideways. But let me tell you one thing, you pin-striped prick. You may well be right, and West Midlands may just take this collar and move on, what with budgets being the way they are and the bosses being such tossers from here to Timbuktu, but I won’t stop, I promise you that. And I will take down anyone, anyone, who’s involved in getting my friend killed, and in keeping her killer out of the courts.’

  Pope smiled, and turned to Henry.

  ‘That sounded very much like a threat to me, DC Armstrong. What do you think?’

  Henry thought about it for a moment.

  ‘What I think, sir, is that you are an even nastier piece of shit than any of the stupid, sad, violent, abused, stoned offenders that we get through here every single day. You’re worse than your client, even, because at least he’s young and impressionable. But what’s your excuse? So you take this from me. It won’t just be Pepper who’ll come after Young, and you, and anyone else who’s involved in all this. It’ll be me, and it’ll be every friend and colleague we have. We know exactly who you are, and we know just what you are, Mr. Pope.’

  Pope wasn’t smiling when he turned to walk away, but Pepper was grinning when she turned to Henry.

  ‘That was unprofessional, love. Consider yourself told-off. But fuck him. And if he complains, which he might, we need to agree what we were saying to him just now. We’re on the CCTV, so we may need to account for a minute or two. So what were we saying, again?’

  ‘You said we’d keep looking for the real killer no matter what, and I just agreed with you.’

  ‘Aye, exactly. And, by the way, we will keep after Young, don’t you worry. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.’

  ‘Is there?’

  ‘Oh, aye, absolutely. It all depends on where you make the first incision, doesn’t it?’

  Word got round the station twice as fast as any email, and Pepper mutely accepted the congratulations offered by the half dozen officers that she met on the way back to her office.

  ‘Come on, love,’ said the Duty Inspector, logging her lack of a trace of triumphalism. ‘It’s not you they’ve charged, is it?’

  ‘I know, but…’

  ‘Shit, I’m so sorry. You grew up with Linda Taylor, didn’t you?’

  ‘Aye, that’s right.’

  ‘Well you got the bastard, Pepper. And the Chief’s going to be like a dog with two dicks when he hears about this. You’ve only gone and cleared up another force’s murder from two hundred miles away.’

  ‘Not really, Tom. That’s not how it is, not really. Listen, we must…’

  ‘Aye, you get on, love. But
bloody well done. Nothing better than getting a killer off the streets, is there?’

  When they reached to the door of the CID office Henry held it open, just as he always did.

  ‘You know that’s sexist, right?’ said Pepper, smiling for the first time in what felt like days.

  ‘Is it? I’m sorry, Pepper.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. I was pulling your leg. Listen, you go on, I’ve just got to go and…’

  ‘Skin a cat?’

  ‘Aye, exactly.’

  She turned to go, but Henry put a hand on her arm. And that was unusual. There were plenty of touchy-feely going on gropey-gropey coppers in this nick, but Henry certainly wasn’t one of them. She didn’t think he’d ever touched her before.

  ‘I’m in, Pepper. Whatever it is we have to do. You do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do, lad. We’ll get the bastard yet, don’t you worry about that.’

  Pepper ran up the stairs to the management suite, and Mary Clark’s PA seemed keen to chat.

  ‘She’s just had the Chief on’, said Janice, adding conspiratorially, ‘I heard quite a bit of laughter from this end. So go on in, you’re expected. Coffee, is it?’

  Pepper said it was, and knocked at the Super’s door. Janice had never offered her so much as the time of day in the past.

  ‘Well done, Pepper’ said Mary Clark, before Pepper had the door half way open. ‘The Chief is absolutely made up, I can tell you. He was talking about charging West Midlands a consultancy fee. But we got the bastard, and that’s the main thing.’

  ‘No, we didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, ma’am, he was there all right. Every detail he gave us will check out. But he wasn’t alone. I’m absolutely 100% certain of that.’

  ‘Then why was this Thompson lad involved at all? What was he needed for?’

  Pepper shrugged. ‘Two obvious possibilities, ma’am. Some sort of test, an initiation, to see if he’d bloody his hands, or maybe he was always intended to be sacrificed. That’s more likely, I’d say, given that Young is behind the whole thing.’

  Pepper paused, then sat down opposite Mary Clark, and put her summer-freckled arms on the pale, polished oak desk. ‘But that’s just the way that Dai Young treats his people, I’m afraid. They’re all completely expendable.’ She looked hard at the Superintendent, who seemed small, almost frail, in her big black chair. ‘I wouldn’t want to be one of his people. Not for anything.’

  ‘You know, don’t you?’ Clark’s voice was quiet, but steady.

  ‘Aye, I do. But why? How did it happen?’

  Pepper had to wait for her answer, because the knock at the door was followed immediately by Janice’s entrance. It took an endless minute for the coasters to be found and laid out, the coffee to be poured, milk and sugar to be offered, and for the tray to be left on the side table. Finally, Janice was gone.

  ‘So why, Mary?’

  ‘It’s Peter, my brother.’

  ‘The one who’s the graphic designer, over in Leeds? The one you showed me the picture of, the lad with the daft glasses and the big, bushy beard?’

  ‘Aye. And he was a graphic designer, Pepper, he was. He’s had a drug problem for years, so he stole from work, and when it was discovered he borrowed money from a loan shark, just to tide him over. Young must have found about it, because he bought in the debt, and told my brother that either he paid up, or I did. And since I didn’t have that kind of cash I found out a couple of things for him. They were nothing, honestly Pepper, but then…’

  ‘He had you? Of course he did. Christ, Mary, why didn’t you come straight to me with this? I could have got it sorted in five minutes, and no-one would have had to know. No-one.’

  ‘I know, I know, but Young told me that if I told anyone about it Peter’s kids would pay instead. He had photos of them, Pepper. He’d had them watched.’

  ‘Jesus, Mary. If you were a proper copper you’d have known how to deal with this shit. It was a piece of piss to handle, early doors, was this. If you’d played your cards right you’d never have got into this situation, and your brother wouldn’t have had to pay back a penny, because the bastard who threatened him would be looking at some proper jail time now. Instead of which it’s you who’s going away. Christ, you’ll do five years for this, maybe more.’

  ‘I know. I’m ready to confess, right now.’

  ‘No, don’t do that. The damage is done, and it makes no odds anyway. I don’t think you could do five minutes inside, let alone five years. But tell me this, and tell me the truth now, did you give up our Linda too? Did you tell that bastard where she was?’

  Mary was crying silently now.

  ‘Come on, Mary. Was it you? Like I say, it makes no odds to anyone now, love.’

  ‘No. No, it wasn’t me. I swear it. He asked me to find out, and I tried, but I couldn’t. I told him that no-one here knew anything. You must believe me about that, Pepper.’

  ‘I do. It’s all right, Mary. Unless Linda had another contact here, and I never thought she did, there’s no way that anyone on the force could have known, because I had no idea where she was at. She wanted to tell me, more than once, but I never let her. She needed to understand that she couldn’t tell anyone. But I guess the message didn’t get through. She probably blabbed to someone back home, maybe when she’d had a few, and they sold her out for a couple of hundred quid. Maybe less. Aye, probably a lot less.’

  Mary used the paper napkin that Janice had left on her saucer to dab her eyes. She stood up.

  ‘I’m glad it’s you who’s arresting me, Pepper.’

  ‘Who said anything about arresting you? You deserve to go to prison, but what good would that do anyone? The bloody bosses should stop hiring people with no policing experience to the senior ranks, of course they should, but even if I threw you to the dogs it wouldn’t stop them, the tossers. They’d just trot out that ‘one bad apple’ bollocks yet again, and carry on regardless. So what we need to do is make sure that we take down Dai Young, get the bastard who killed Linda, and get you out of that bloody uniform. And we need to do them in that order.’

  ‘You mean I just have to resign, and that’s it?’

  ‘Not quite. I don’t know what harm you’ve done, and I don’t bloody want to know, but you’ll need to be involved in what I’m planning if we’re to make this work. There’ll be risk, real personal danger for you, and you won’t have the whole force behind you. You’ll be completely on your own.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’ll do whatever you ask. I want to get that bastard just as much as you do.’

  Pepper motioned to Mary to sit back down again.

  ‘No, you don’t, Mary. You’re weak, and you’re a bloody mile out of your depth. So let me make one thing crystal clear to you. If you tip Young off, or fail to do anything that I ask you to do, anything at all, then the deal is off. And if that’s the case it won’t be me who grasses you up, and if I’m ever asked we never had this conversation. It’s your choice, love, the devil or the deep blue sea. Which is it to be?’

  ‘The sea, of course.’

  ‘Good. And at least you still know which one’s the devil.’ Pepper smiled. ‘Come on, love. Stay strong, and we’ll get you through this. It might even work out for the best.’

  Clark nodded, slightly and sadly. ’So what happens now?’

  ‘You arrange a meeting with Young. Has to be face-to-face.’

  ‘He hardly ever does that. I’ve only ever met him twice. I don’t even have a number for him.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Just contact whoever you usually deal with, and I am going to need the person’s name in a minute, and tell him that you have to see Dai. Tell him that you’ve got information about me and Davey Hood.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Aye, for now. Tell your contact that you have to meet tomorrow. It has to be tomorrow, OK? I’ll give you more details in a few hours, when I’ve got this shit worked out, but for now just mention my name, and Davey Hood.’

&nbs
p; ‘Do I say that you’re on to me? That you know it’s me who’s been feeding information to Young?’

  ‘No, don’t say that, not yet. Give nothing away. You have information that you must pass on personally to Dai. If your contact tries to put pressure on, maybe about your brother, you just stick to your guns, no matter what.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Good. Now one last thing. Who’s your contact? Because I’ll be needing a little chat, when all this is over.’

  ‘Tommy Taylor.’

  Pepper slammed her fist down on the desk. ‘That useless little shit. He was pumping you for his wife’s whereabouts, knowing that Young would have her murdered if he found out. I’ll fucking have him, the bastard.’

  ‘He said it was him who was looking. That he just wanted to talk to Linda, that’s all. Find out about his kids.’

  ‘But you didn’t believe him, Mary? Tell me you didn’t believe him.’

  ‘Of course not. I’m not that bloody stupid.’

  Pepper got up, started to leave, then turned again and put her hands on the back of the chair that she’d just vacated.

  ‘Would you have told Tommy about Linda, if you’d known?’

  Mary answered reluctantly, and almost immediately.

  ‘I expect I would have, aye.’

  ‘Even though you knew what they’d do to her?’

  ‘Yes. God help me, but I expect I would have told them. In the end, I would have told them. I’m just so grateful it didn’t come to that.’