Lies That Blind

by Tony Hutchinson

  Charlie Sneddon struggled to his feet, limped towards a stool.

  ‘Serves you right, dickhead,’ Carol shouted, before turning back to Ed and taking the drink from him.

  ‘Thanks love. Come on then, what do you want me for? You were lucky mind. I haven’t been out on a Sunday for ages.’

  ‘Let’s go to the smoking area out the back. I can hear myself think out there.’

  ‘Hey girls,’ Carol shouted above the music, bringing their sing-a-long to a temporary stop. ‘I’m just popping out the back with Sergeant Whelan. Must be my lucky day.’

  ‘I saw him first Cals,’ shouted a blonde.

  ‘Give’s a shout when you’re finished and I’ll take over,’ a black-haired woman with a pink crocheted top cackled.

  ‘Don’t take all his strength, leave some for me,’ another joined in.

  Ed ignored them and their 40-a-day laughter.

  The sideways glances from a few of the punters were met by a lip snarl from Carol. Nobody grunted. Nobody wanted to fall out with the Penders.

  ‘What is it then?’ she asked, putting a cigarette between her lips.

  ‘You still in touch with Harry Pullman?’

  ‘Long time since I worked with Harry. I’m respectable now.’

  ‘Yeah I believe you.’

  She playfully kicked his calf.

  Ed smiled, Carol’s blue eyes twinkling mischievously at him. ‘I didn’t ask whether you were still one of his girls. I asked if you were still in touch with him.’

  ‘Bit dodgy these days, being in touch with Harry, you know, since he grassed on the Skinners.’

  Ed watched Carol Pender smoke her cigarette, the deep lines around her mouth as she puckered to sip her drink.

  ‘I remember you back in the day,’ he said. ‘You were a real stunner.’

  Carol’s lips slid into a boozy grin and she blew him a kiss.

  ‘Always the charmer. You sure you’re not trying to get into my knickers?’

  Ed laughed. ‘Can you get a message to Harry for me?’

  She looked directly at Ed.

  ‘Maybe’

  ‘Tell him to call me on this number.’

  Ed handed her a piece of paper with eleven digits on it.

  ‘Call him this afternoon.’

  ‘I’ll have to try and get a number for him,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll have a number for him,’ Ed smiled. ‘You’re one of the few he can trust up here. Tell him I’ve just been suspended for corruption and -’

  ‘Bloody hell Ed,’ Carol’s eyebrows stretched to their limits. ‘I always had you down as one of the good guys.’

  Ed shrugged. ‘Looks can apparently be deceiving. Tell him I need to see him. Speak to him in the next hour Carol. And when you go back in there,’ he flicked his head in the direction of the pub, ‘tell them I asked if your lot would sort out Charlie Sneddon if he ever goes to the police about what just happened.’

  ‘Will do.’

  She stood on her tiptoes, kissed his cheek. ‘Be careful Ed. The likes of me still consider you one of the good guys.’

  Chapter 30

  Sam walked to the tiny office adjoining the mortuary. Two low-slung, high-backed armchairs with thin wooden arms, no doubt recycled from one of the wards, were jammed against the wall. A dirty yellow plastic chair was next to an old table on the wall opposite.

  Jim Melia and Julie Trescothick were on the armchairs, the mortuary technician on the yellow seat.

  Sam stood at the door, no space in the room.

  ‘Sam,’ Jim said. ‘Good of you to turn up.’ He smiled.

  Sam returned the smile. ‘Not like I’ve been getting my hair done Jim.’

  ‘Quite, quite…I’ve been thinking, and discussing my thoughts with Julie here. To do eight post mortems in one day is a lot and we don’t want to miss anything because we’re tired.’

  Jim watched Sam for her reaction.

  ‘Seems sensible,’ she said.

  ‘Good. I suggest we do the four victims of the shooting today and the man in the rabbit suit. Julie tells me the ballistic expert is here and it would be useful to have him at the examinations.’

  ‘Fine with me.’

  ‘I reckon each one will take about three hours.’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘What I’ve done,’ continued Jim, ‘is call out my two colleagues to speed the process up. Is that agreeable to you?’

  Sam considered Jim’s proposal. It was unusual for the prosecution to use more than one pathologist, but this was not a usual investigation.

  ‘Fine by me,’ she said, before looking at Julie. ‘We got enough SOCOs to make three teams?’

  ‘Just waiting for your say-so to call them out Boss.’

  ‘How many of them are on rest days?’

  ‘All of them.’

  Sam’s face resembled a blow fish as she puffed her cheeks and did the sums. The budget always spiraled upwards when jobs came in on weekends: three teams, six officers all on time and a half. Add that to those who were called out earlier and she’d already clocked up hundreds of hours of overtime.

  Pity there was nobody here from the Home Office to see how quickly a major incident budget could evaporate.

  ‘Call them out Julie. I want this show on the road as soon as possible.’

  Sam walked outside, lit a Marlboro Gold and rang Bev Summers.

  ‘You on speaker phone?’ asked Sam.

  ‘No. I’m 10/8. We’ve stopped for loo and tea.’

  Sam smiled. The good old fashioned Ten Code. 10/8 meant Bev couldn’t be overheard.

  ‘Don’t speak,’ Sam said, knowing Tara must be somewhere near, ‘just listen. Ed’s been suspended.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I know, came as a shock to me as well. Look I don’t know any details other than he’s suspected of corruption.’

  Sam heard the huge intake of breath.

  ‘He’s angry,’ Sam continued. ‘Accusing me of knowing, which I didn’t. I’m at the mortuary waiting for the PMs to start but I wanted to give you the heads up.’

  ‘Appreciate it.’

  ‘Ring me later,’ Sam said.

  Bev was a good detective, but she loved a gossip. The news of Ed’s suspension would gather momentum.

  ‘Whelan,’ Ed said, phone pressed to his ear.

  ‘Now then cocksucker.’

  Ed ignored the insult and the laughter that followed.

  Harry Pullman: ‘Who’s been a naughty boy then.’

  It was a statement, not a question.

  Ed sat on the edge of the bed, eyes on the yellow-stained white skirting board.

  He’d driven to Hartlepool, booked into a B and B a handful of on-line reviewers had referred to as shabby-chic. Ed had to admire their sense of humour. The place was chic perhaps in the 1960s when Seaton Carew was a coastal resort packed with day trippers, a funfair and crazy golf. Now it was just shabby.

  ‘We need to meet,’ Ed said.

  ‘Why would I do that? All contact is through my Witness Protection Officer. You know that. They’d go mad if they knew I was even calling you.’

  Two small steps and Ed was in the bay window; the sea view blocked by a yellow filament of grime and grease, thick dust trapped in the folds of the long, faded red curtains.

  Ed sneezed.

  ‘Bless you,’ Pullman said.

  ‘Thanks. Firstly, don’t forget who spirited you away to safety in the first place.’

  ‘And you know I appreciated that, but this life in protection is not all beer and skittles Ed.’

  ‘Better than the alternative. If the Skinners had their way you’d be at the bottom of the North Sea by now.’

  ‘And they’re still trying to do me,’ Harry sounded bitter. ‘Remind me. Why should I meet up with you?’

  Ed counted the dead flies on the windowsill while he thought about his answer.

  ‘Two reasons,’ he said finally. ‘The cat’s out the bag as far as Tara’s concerned and nobody’s b
uying the suicide pact.’

  Harry Pullman’s tone hot-wired to enlightened excitement, a child who suddenly grasped trigonometry.

  ‘What are you telling me you bent bastard? You know Ray Reynolds always thought you were bent. Too close to that twat Brian Banks amongst other things.’

  Ed didn’t respond. He’d known Brian Banks, a scrap metal dealer, property developer and suspected drug dealer, since he’d joined the force; over the years Banks had provided a lot of information.

  Pullman continued. ‘You’re the fourth man.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘After that corruption inquiry years ago, the ‘Seaton Three’. Ray always talked about another bent copper. Always asking if I knew anything. He called the bent bastard ‘The Fourth Man’.

  Ed’s jaw clenched at the reference. Anthony Blunt, a member of the Cambridge Spy Ring providing information to the KGB along with Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby, was publicly revealed to be the ‘Fourth Man’ in 1979.

  ‘I’m not bent and I’m no fourth man.’

  ‘What you talking to me for then? Your chickens have come home to roost and you’re in the shit big time.’

  Ed sat on the edge of the bed, the thin nylon duvet cover a yellow floral number pock-marked with clicks.

  ‘Do you want to meet or what?’

  ‘What’s in it for you Whelan?’ Harry Pullman on his guard, playing hardball. ‘That’ the question I’m asking myself.’

  The knock was so quiet Ed almost missed it.

  He turned to see an elderly soul who should have been in a retirement home years ago.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you Mr Smith,’ old school polite like she was running the Ritz not this broken down relic. ‘What time will you be wanting breakfast?’

  ‘I won’t thanks. I’ll be leaving very early, but thank you.’

  He closed the door.

  ‘Is that the best name you can come up with?’

  Ed pictured Pullman shaking his head with a wide smirk on his face.

  ‘Look,’ Ed snapped, ‘do you want to meet or not?’

  ‘Tell you what. I’m curious. I’m not due to see my protection officers –’

  Ed’s anger finally snapped.

  ‘You’re not a member of the Royal Family you cock, you’re a frightened nobody on the run from the bogey men.’

  ‘And you’re a soon to be ex-cop jailed for being bent,’ Pullman fired back. ‘It’s true what they say about jail and the police.’

  He let the words hang before continuing. ‘Now we both know where we stand…I’m not due to see my protection people until Wednesday.’

  ‘Fair enough. I can drive to you. Where are you?’

  ‘Like I was born yesterday,’ Pullman’s voice was thick with scorn and disdain. ‘For all I know you’re working for the Skinners you bent bastard.’

  Ed walked back to the grime and flies.

  I’ll remember this knobhead

  ‘So how do you want to play it then?’ Ed asked.

  ‘You still got that campervan?’

  ‘Using it now.’

  ‘Drive to Robin Hood’s Bay, it’s just outside Whitby.’

  ‘I know where it is.’

  ‘There’s a campsite above the village.’

  ‘That might be closed. It’s out of season.’

  ‘Find somewhere to pull over then.’ Pullman was enjoying calling the shots. ‘Be there tomorrow. I’ll call you at 8am.’

  ‘You somewhere near there?’

  ‘Nice try Whelan.’

  Chapter 31

  Hugh Campbell was not a man to cross; politeness personified and pleasant when he wanted to be, but so were the Krays.

  Campbell’s last pair of school shoes would still fit him and he hadn’t been inside a classroom since he was 14. But size never equated to aggression.

  He swayed back and forth on the canopied swing, thoughts drifting in tandem with the motion, watching birds fly across the moorland, his hand occasionally touching the heads of the two black Labradors beneath him. Rocking on the veranda, he reflected on his journey from Seaton St George poverty to landowner.

  He had left school with no qualifications; boys like him didn’t do homework, boys like him fought and got involved in petty theft. The lucky ones got to run errands for criminals, not low life bottom feeders, but the serious figures who ran Seaton. They were players, and Hugh Campbell always did what they asked.

  He had got his chance early, an opportunity to show he was the right sort, when he picked up and hid a discarded handgun used in a gangland hit. He was 12 years old. He shouldn’t have been playing on the diggers that Sunday night, shouldn’t have witnessed the execution of one of Kenny Skinner’s boys, but he had, and more importantly he knew who had pulled the trigger.

  Hugh Campbell had three choices…say nothing, go to the cops or go to Kenny Skinner.

  Saying nothing was not an option.

  His own father, useless and absent as he was, had always told him never to speak to the police.

  So the answer had been easy. He went to Kenny Skinner and showed no fear, even at that young age. Fear was something he had conquered long before. His father’s belt had seen to that.

  Campbell closed his eyes now, the gentle movement of the swing transporting him back to his childhood. The peaty richness of the moorland became the smell of fried food, the noise of the birds overhead was replaced by aggressive drunks shouting the odds, the light patterns behind his eyes were suddenly the glint of flick-knives under cold street corner neon.

  He shivered as he remembered the snow and freezing temperatures of the December childhood that changed him forever. ‘Can I speak to Mr Skinner?’ He wasn’t much older than Kenny’s son Billy. ‘I have something important to tell him.’

  A shaven-headed bouncer with angry tattoos and a boxer’s nose had blocked his way to the back street pub that was Skinner’s office back then.

  Hugh Campbell refused to say why he needed to speak with the boss. His cheap, shiny, black tracksuit and worn, white plimsolls spoke of poverty; his bright eyes glistened with defiance.

  Kenny Skinner gave him two twenty pound notes in exchange for the location of the gun and the name of the killer.

  It became the best Christmas of his life, the first time the family hadn’t been short, the first time he bought presents for his mother and younger sister, the first time they enjoyed Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. After that, his mother and sister always had presents and a turkey at Christmas. His father could go fuck himself.

  He didn’t know what happened to Albert Craig, the guy who had pulled the trigger, not then anyway, but he never saw him again. Twelve years later, when he was one of Skinner’s trusted confidantes, he found out.

  Albert Craig’s death came after two days of prolonged punishment beatings, entry to the afterlife via the stomachs of the local pigs.

  By the time he was 18, Campbell was running Kenny’s snooker halls with Billy Skinner and at 21 they were managing a string of nightclubs.

  Before he was thirty, Kenny Skinner allowed Hugh to break away and form his own businesses. Hugh had nothing to do with clubs and drugs, preferring instead to concentrate on the two loves of his life: gambling and girls. A life surrounded by fillies, he’d boast; betting shops and massage parlours with some lucrative loan sharking the vinegar on his chips.

  If anyone crossed him he was ruthless. Nobody fucked with Hugh Campbell.

  That life was behind him now, the advent of internet betting securing him a pension fund big enough to make even the greediest banker happy and letting him step quietly into gilded retirement.

  He still had the scars, the physical ones anyway. Hugh Campbell had no lingering emotional issues; business had always been business. The vivid scar on his cheek, running from the lobe of his left ear to the corner of his mouth, had earned him the nickname ‘Scarface’. Not very original but he liked it, or at least he did when he was still in that life, the aura of violence it
created.

  The mistake his attacker made was to just maim him. Three nights later he was found dead on the street, one bullet in the head. No one was ever convicted. Those who knew who was responsible said nothing.

  At 59 and after a life of crime hidden behind a veil of respectability, his total jail time was a single 18-month stretch. Even that had been enough to make him realise there was no loyalty in the underworld. Too many were ready to grass when their backs were to the wall, and the bigger the fish…

  He wasn’t about to be taken down in the next police operation. No point in tempting fate this late in the game. Get out with the money while the going was good.

  And for Campbell, that going had been better than he could ever have dreamed. He fell in love with country life, shooting and fishing like a man born to it, walking the moorland paths, never tiring of the sight of the heather and grasses that thrived on the dense layers of peat.

  More than anything, Hugh Campbell was determined to remain at liberty to enjoy the life his old world had delivered.

  These days the police seemed to have the power to confiscate anything they deemed proceeds of crime. Forensic Accountants were springing up everywhere, leeches tracing people’s assets for a tidy fee.

  The police had been an occupational hazard back in the day. Now, he didn’t want them anywhere near him.

  He also had sons of his own to think about. Shirley had died nine years ago, radiotherapy and chemo finally losing their rearguard action against the tumors that spread like weeds through her broken body. His sons didn’t want betting shops and massage parlours, not now. Campbell knew his sons’ sights had risen, the lure of their own empire suddenly so close they could taste it. They wanted excitement and saw an opportunity, the only one potentially standing in their way that grassing snake Harry Pullman.

  If Pullman didn’t give evidence Luke and Mark Skinner were out. If he made it to the witness box and delivered, the Skinners would grow old in their prison cells and Harry Pullman might like his own chances of taking over.

  Hugh Campbell rocked back and forth, accepting now what the scrawny 12-year-old had accepted a lifetime ago. Doing nothing was not an option.