The Dirty Game

by Solomon Carter

  “I’m clean…I mean it!”

  “Clean but still dirty, strolling around and paying tarts for favours. That’s the kind of reformed character you are, eh?”

  The man stammered and slapped a hand over his mouth.

  “What do you want? You know I didn’t do this.”

  The men locked eyes. Eva watched their shared gaze. Something was going on but she couldn’t get what it was. At her side, she felt Dan’s squinting eyes all over the same issue, scrutinising them, reading the lines and every word in between them.

  “I want you to tell me what you were going to tell these two. You started sharing information, but you chickened out. Tell me. Tell them too. Tell us what you know right now,” said Rowntree shouting, getting up close into the killer’s face like Dan would do. But she had no restraint on Gary Rowntree. Still Eva watched, ready to intervene if she absolutely had to.

  “These bastards imagined it. I don’t know anything. I just wanted them to leave me alone. I want all of you to leave me alone – I’m trying to start again.”

  In a flash Rowntree seized hold of the man’s jacket collar and pulled him close. “I don’t believe you. You don’t know what the truth is, John. Tell me the truth John because the lies are going to hurt soon.”

  The man gasped with frustration and panic.

  “Gary, this is too much…” said Eva.

  Rowntree turned his head and looked at Eva without letting go. Quietly he said. “You’d be the one to know, Eva…” His words stung. It seemed as if Rowntree knew everything, and it scared her. Her fear shook her to the core and she hid her face from Dan so he couldn’t see.

  “Tell me!”

  The man whimpered. “There’s… nothing… nothing to tell.”

  Rowntree let go and Balfour dropped to the floor, landing on his backside with a bump.

  Rowntree turned to face Dan and Eva. “He doesn’t know anything. If he did, he would have told me. He’s shit scared as you can see.”

  “But he told us about someone big being behind this,”

  “You’re a bully, Dan. Look at you, scars all over your face, a finger missing, you look more like a Bond villain than the Romeo scally you were once. He was probably scared of you.”

  “Look who’s talking, Shrek.”

  The men were shaping up. But Eva was reading Gary Rowntree. Was everything that just happened planned? Even down to his tactics with Dan? Eva knew Dan’s buttons, maybe Rowntree knew them well enough to use them by now.

  “Dan,” said Eva, “you heard what Gary said. John Balfour doesn’t know anything. Let’s stop wasting our time.”

  Eva looked at Rowntree. His eyes danced with the light of the thought processes behind them. He was inscrutable yet his mind was busy.

  “Thanks Gary, but I’ve seen and heard enough here,” she said. “Sorry for your trouble, John.”

  “Piss off, the lot of you.”

  “That’s it, Eva?” said Gary. “If you still think he’s lying, I can work on him a little more for you.”

  “No. He’s told us all he can. Let’s start digging on the other names, Dan.”

  Angry and sullen, Dan nodded and followed Eva’s lead. “See you around, Eva,” said Gary.

  “Who knows?” said Eva in response as she walked away. She could never be friendly with the man again.

  “Is he following us or not?” said Eva.

  Dan checked and replied. “Rowntree? No. He’s not.”

  “That figures.”

  “Why?” now Dan looked at her, suddenly interested.

  “Rowntree just stopped us in our tracks. Everything he just said to Balfour, he was saying two things at once, Dan. He was giving us one message and Balfour another. I think Rowntree already knows about Mr Big, whoever he is. The only reason he came here with us was to threaten John Balfour not to say a word or face the consequences.”

  Dan half stopped in his tracks.

  “Are you serious, Eva?”

  “Absolutely. Come on, I know you didn’t believe in what was happening. I saw your eyes - like you were looking for something else.”

  “When Rowntree’s in front of me, there’s always something else going on. But you might have just hit the nail on the head. You always liked the guy, Eva. What happened?”

  “I just started to see him the way you saw him Dan…”

  “He’s a snake. And he’s beginning to shed his old skin. I’m glad you can see it.”

  “Oh, I can see it. But Rowntree must never know we can see it, or he’ll destroy any chance we have of getting at the truth… and why he’s covering it up.”

  “So do we stick with Balfour or look for a new suspect?” said Dan

  “We stick with Balfour – not as the suspect – but as the path to our suspect. From now on let’s keep the hell away from Rowntree. We just discovered that he is definitely very bad news.”

  Ten

  It was the day after Rowntree’s show with John Balfour at St Mary’s Walk. Eva recognised the number appearing on her phone and ignored it three times before she finally answered. The first two calls came in quick succession. She’d woken at six, shaken off a slight hangover with a morning run (four miles, not the six she promised herself) and got back in time for Dan to interrupt her shower with some cardio vascular training of his own. Working up an even bigger appetite than she’d expected she grilled some bacon and made doorstep sandwiches dripping with butter, the kind her dad had made when people cared less about calories, white flour and processed meat, yet seemed to live just as long. Eva’s phone was on silent, but she read the name of the caller as she chewed her bacon over a cup of fresh filter coffee.

  “Who is it?” said Dan, not really paying attention as he scanned the BBC news headlines on the iPad.

  “No one,” said Eva, instantly lying, falling further into the private hell that Rowntree had planned for her. Though they were converging in their opinion of DI Gary Rowntree, Eva was not ready to tell Dan about his awful sinister proposition.

  A half hour later when Dan was showering and getting ready for a day tracking some of Balfour’s friends. Eva turned the volume up on the television and finally answered the call.

  “What do you want, Gary? And you’d better not start with the shit you pulled the other day at that restaurant.”

  “Wha…? Oh yeah.” He seemed distracted, in a daze. If not that, then what did he want?

  “I’ve thought about what you said Gary, and I want you to know that if I ever did cross any line you’ll still never have enough crap on me to force me into bed with you. I liked you Gary but you messed up big time.”

  “Eva, Eva. Shut up and let me get a word in. This is about John Balfour… he’s dead.”

  Eva’s face solidified and set into incomprehension, then the possibilities kicked into her consciousness. The situation had exploded.

  “What? Gary… tell me who, where, what and when?”

  “He’s dead, Eva. I was with him after you left us, you know, smoothing things out, apologising for giving him a hard time. I find playing both good cop and bad cop works for me with my snitches and projects like Balfour.”

  She wanted to ask him the obvious, unspeakable question. Why? Why did you do it? But if Rowntree had killed John Balfour, then there was nothing to be asked. The only reason Rowntree would have killed him was to cover up a crime in which he was implicated. Was he implicated in Laura Gosling’s murder? That didn’t bear thinking about, and Eva thought it unlikely. But the man had surely done something.

  “Pet project… exactly why was John Balfour one of your pet projects, Gary…?”

  There was a gasp at the end of the line and a bitter laugh. “No, surely not. You don’t think I did this, do you? I know my stock has gone down in your world, but hang on. There’s no way I could ever do that. I’m serious. What I said to you… that’s because you’re more on my page than you realise, Eva. One day you’ll snap out of it, and you’ll treat me differently.”

  “What
ever you have in mind, it’s not going to happen… and you didn’t answer my question,” said Eva.

  “I’ll answer it. But you’ve got a bloody cheek after what you’ve been tied up with…”

  “We’re talking about you here, Gary.”

  “No, we’re not. We’re talking about John Balfour! They stabbed him in the back, over and over. There’s twenty-six wounds in his back through his lungs, heart, kidney and liver, the guy was bled dry with more cuts than I’ve ever seen. It was madness, Eva. I couldn’t do that.”

  Maybe he was right. If Rowntree was going to off someone, he would be a pragmatist about it. Maybe a bullet through the eye, or a single stab wound to a vital organ, but if he was telling the truth, Balfour’s murder seemed extreme.

  “Your pet project, Gary. Tell me about it.”

  “A throwaway remark, Eva. I keep tabs on all the cons who’ve committed the worst crimes on my patch. They know things, they see things about to happen because they know the people involved and recognise the type. They make good eyes and ears once they’ve been made compliant.”

  “You said I’d crossed the line, Gary, but you’re the one sounding worried. How far have you crossed that line?”

  “I’m calling you because you saw me with him last. Two hours later, Balfour was found dead in the churchyard at the end of his road. I didn’t do it Eva. But I am freaked out and I am furious. The bastard could have been watching me, waiting until I was gone.”

  “Two hours is a long time, Gary.”

  “That’s how long it took until his body was called in… Balfour could have been dead within five minutes of me leaving…”

  “Gary. Is there any chance we can see the body? Maybe I can vouch for you.”

  “I don’t know how my senior officer is seeing me right now. I might not have the clout or the freedom I had before last night, but I’ll try. I’ll get you to see it before they suspend me or kick me off the Gosling case.”

  Gary Rowntree should have never had the authority which came from being a Detective Inspector. Maybe he should have never been a copper in the first place. That’s what Dan had always believed, and it was what Eva had now discovered for herself. But just how far would Rowntree be prepared to go to hide his crimes and keep his job? It was an unknown. Even with twenty six knife wounds in Balfour’s back, Eva couldn’t totally rule out Rowntree as a suspect. Rowntree could have been the last one to see Balfour alive… he appeared to have motive… and she was learning he was dangerous.

  “Just get me in there, Gary. I want to see his body.”

  If he was innocent, he’d ensure she could see it, because there was a chance she would save his skin. Even after what he’d said to her, Rowntree seemed to know that Eva’s basic moral code would not let her see an innocent man go down for a crime he didn’t commit.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I know you will. And what you said to me before…”

  “Not now, Eva, please.”

  He hung up on her, the bastard, taking from her surely what was her right.

  “Dan?” she called. Dan emerged into the front room, drying his hair and his well-defined torso.

  “Turn that TV down, will you?” he said, making a face.

  Eva nodded and aimed the remote at the flat screen until it fell silent.

  “John Balfour.”

  “He confessed!” said Dan, with a gleeful smile. His smile dropped like a stone in the face of Eva’s shaking head.

  “Whatever happened to your legendary gut feeling, Mr Bradley?”

  “Eva, what is it?”

  “John Balfour’s dead. He was killed last night, maybe straight after we left.”

  Dan froze and his eyes glazed over at the possibilities.

  “The bastard. We were getting too close, Eva! We were too close to the truth!” Dan tossed his towel on the floor and threw himself into a chair. Eva knew that look in his steely eyes. Dan was furious, and he was analysing the facts he already knew more closely, looking for a chink in the enemy’s armour. Now he knew they were close, he would be relentless, and Eva would have trouble keeping up with him.

  Eleven

  “This corpse is a total dog’s dinner, Gary. Don’t you think a full description or a few photos would have sufficed?”

  The police pathologist was a man with jowls and slicked back brown hair which had to be dyed, as the wrinkles on his face and his pear body shaped suggested the man to be in his sixties. Nonetheless, Eva already liked him. Grimstone by name, Grimstone by nature, the old man had given Gary Rowntree a hard time about the process of accessing a corpse as soon as he’d arrived. Now they were at the side of the body, the old man didn’t seem any less intent on giving Rowntree a hard time.

  “These two here are detectives, Grimmy… just not real ones. They saw John Balfour when I did yesterday. They wanted to see what had happened to him so they could help piece it together.”

  “But surely, you’re the man for that Gary,” said Grimstone with a derisory air. Grimstone sounded as if he had as much faith in Rowntree’s police work as Dan. The old man looked at Eva for the first time as he put his clinician’s gloves on. He did a slight double take. “You’re a private detective? What the hell did you get into that thankless line of work for?”

  “On days like today, I’m not so sure.”

  “And who the hell is paying you for this case?”

  “Nobody,” said Dan. “We were aiming to track down the killer of the prostitute Laura Gosling. You may have heard of her. We think these murders could be linked. She was a friend.”

  Now the man gave Dan his quizzical double take. “Yes, I’ve met the woman, so to speak. She was left in an appalling state too, but this is far worse.”

  Dan stiffened. “What do you mean, appalling?”

  “Laura Gosling? The killer cut her throat with so much violence and force…”

  “Grimmy, the woman was his friend, for God’s sake!” said Rowntree. Grimstone gave Rowntree hard eyes then asked Dan “shall I continue, detective?”

  Dan nodded, his accusing gaze flicking in Rowntree’s direction.

  “They used a sharp blade, very sharp, as was clear from the clean cut, and it went very deep. So deep it had cut through the oesophagus and the larynx all the way to the spinal column. The blade struck the spinal column with such force that it had chipped the bone. The attack was ruthless, well aimed and determined to kill.”

  Dan’s mouth dropped open and he turned to Eva. She shook her head at the despicable crime. She was also clueless as to who could have done such a thing to a woman like Laura. Dan stammered a little as he tried to rediscover his professional footing. “So… Does this killing have any similarities to the first?”

  Grimstone nodded. “You take a look and I’ll talk you through it. This is on your head, Gary, just like everything else.”

  Grimstone’s chubby hand pulled back the sheet and exposed the back of the body where he had been working. There were so many wounds across the once pliable flesh of John Balfour’s back that it resembled an alien terrain full of fissures and crevasses. There was no blood and the flesh had turned a bone white tinged with blue. The open wounds were dark red, almost brown, and there was a controlled but still terrible stench coming from the exposed body. Eva recognised the smell but she wasn’t sure where from… then it came to her. Underneath the chemical smells of the bleach and the formaldehyde there was the smell of a butchery. The smell of opened flesh and spilt blood. From nowhere the thought made her feel sick, but Eva was determined to represent herself and her profession in the best light. These police boys acted like they were the only show in town. Eva was caught between holding her breath and wanting to replace the sickening smell in her lungs and nostrils. Instead she began focusing on the detail as Grimstone began his account.

  “Twenty six wounds of varying depth and degree of impact. Several of the wounds were fatal. The heart was punctured twice, both lungs were stabbed four times, and the liver, kid
neys and intestines were all cut apart by repeated injury. The man would have died the moment his heart was cut, or could have died from the lung injuries, but it appears he was lucky and the heart was struck by the blade before he died from drowning in his own blood.”

  “Why would the cut depths vary?” said Eva.

  Dan jumped in. “Because of the nature of the attack. The man was determined to kill John Balfour quickly and ruthlessly. He was busily thrusting the knife as Balfour was backing away.”

  Grimstone nodded. “Fair assessment. Sometimes the attacking weapon would have reached deep, sometimes the victim is likely to have moved further away in an effort to escape, and then there is the natural swipe, cut and thrust of the killer’s arm. Variance of cut would be the norm.”

  “Does this strike you as a murder of passion, revenge, or for some other reason?” said Eva.

  “Are you going to quote me? Because it’s too early to tell. I need more time before I can make a judgement.”

  “We won’t quote you. We need a steer, that’s all,” she said.

  “Okay. This was premeditated. You can tell first of all because the knife is a professional implement. It is as sharp as anything I’ve seen and the wounds suggest a long blade. Balfour had his back facing the killer. If this was a heat of the moment thing prompted by an argument, they would have been face to face. Hands and arms would have been cut as Balfour fought for his life, but there is none of that. This killer was fast. There is no sign of Balfour even trying to turn to defend himself. I’d say the killer planned this, and knew where to aim. As for the twenty-six wounds, that’s excessive, even for a killer who didn’t know what he was doing. There is some punishment in this, wouldn’t you say?”

  Dan nodded. “I’d say it’s a message,” he said in a low voice.

  Rowntree looked over at him. “A message for whom…”

  Dan shrugged and tugged at his chin. “You tell me…”