A Darker Shade of Blue (6 page)

‘Him told you 'bout me, I s'pose, were it?'

‘That's right.'

Lisa lit a new cigarette from the butt of the last. ‘Got a good twenty minutes till my next, why not?'

*

There was a pair of divers, borrowed for the occasion from the Lincolnshire force, and they struck lucky within the first hour. Will grateful he could assure his boss there'd be no need for overtime. The weapon was a Glock 17, its bulky stock immediately recognisable. Any serial numbers had, of course, been removed. If they begged and pleaded with the technicians, another twenty-four hours should tell them if it was the gun responsible for Arthur Fraser's death.

Will and Helen were both parked up at the side of the road, a lay-by off the A10, the Ely to Cambridge road. They were sitting in Will's car, a faint mist beginning to steam up the insides of the windows.

‘You thinking what I'm thinking?' Will said.

‘Most probably.' A hint of a smile on Helen's face.

‘This shooting. Nothing to suggest any kind of fight or quarrel. Nothing personal. Every sign of careful planning: preparation. A single shot to the head with a weapon that's almost certainly clean. A professional job. It has to be.'

‘Someone hired to make a hit on Fraser?'

‘It looks that way.'

‘Then you have to ask why.'

‘And there's only one answer,'Will said. ‘Sharon Peters.'

Helen nodded. ‘The family, the parents, we should go and talk to them?'

‘Let's wait,' Will said. ‘Till tomorrow. Make sure the ballistics match up.'

‘Okay.'

It was warm inside the car. Their arms close but not touching. An articulated lorry went past close enough to rock them in its slipstream. Still neither one of them made a move to go.

Finally, it was Helen who looked at her watch. ‘Shouldn't you be getting back?'

‘If anything had happened, Lorraine would have called on my mobile.'

‘Even so.'

He left her leaning against the roof of her VW, smoking a cigarette.

When Will arrived home, Lorraine was wandering from room to room, Cowboy Junkies on the stereo, singing quietly along. ‘A Common Disaster' playing over and over, the track programmed to repeat. To Will, it wasn't a good omen.

‘Lol?'

‘Huh?'

‘Can we change this?'

‘Change?'

‘The music. Can we …?'

‘I like it.'

Okay, Will thought, go with the flow.

A good few years back, when he and Lorraine had first started going together, she would fetch her little stash from where she kept it upstairs in the bedroom – her dowry, as she called it – and roll them both a joint. Now that he no longer smoked cigarettes and, Will supposed, with this latest promotion, if she ever suggested it, he passed.

Lorraine, he was sure, still partook from time to time, the sweet smell lingering in the corners of the house and in her hair. Maybe, looking at her slight, slow sway, she was stoned right now.

How would that be for the baby, he wondered, if it were so?

Would it make him a cool kid or slightly crazy?

There were some cans of beer in the fridge and he took one and went into the living room and switched on the TV. Lorraine had been vague about dinner, but he thought she was entitled, hormones all over the place like they were. Later he'd phone for a curry or, better still, a Chinese. It was ages since they'd eaten Chinese.

They were in bed before ten thirty, Lorraine set to read a chapter or so of whatever book she had on the go, Will rolling away from her and on to his side, arm raised to shield his eyes from the light.

He must have fallen asleep straight away, because the next thing he knew it was pitch dark and the bed beside him was empty. Lorraine was sitting on the toilet with her nightgown pulled high across her thighs.

‘You all right?' Anxiety breaking in his voice.

‘Yes. Yes, just woke with this pain.' She indicated low in her abdomen.

‘But you're okay? I mean, nothing's happened?'

‘Nothing's happened.'

When he bent to kiss her forehead it was damp and seared with sweat. ‘Why don't you let me get you something? A drink of water? Tea? How about some peppermint tea?'

‘Yes. Peppermint tea. That would be nice.'

He kissed her chastely on the lips and went downstairs.

Back in bed, he found it near impossible to get back to sleep, dozed fitfully and got up finally at five.

Jake was fast off, thumb in his mouth, surrounded by his favourite toys.

Will made coffee and toast and sat at the kitchen table staring out, willing it to get light. At six thirty he gave in and dialled Helen's number. She answered on the second ring.

‘Not asleep then?'

‘Hardly.'

‘Yesterday,' Will said, ‘you think I was being overcautious?'

‘In the car?'

‘What I said in the car, yes. About waiting to see if we had a match.'

‘You don't think there's any doubt?'

‘Has to be some. But, shit, not really, no.'

‘You want to go over there now? Sharon Peters' parents?'

‘What do you reckon? A couple of hours' drive? More?'

‘Coventry? This time of the morning maybe less.'

‘I'll meet you by the Travelodge on the A14. This side of the turn-off for Hemingford Grey.'

‘It's a deal.' Will could hear the excitement rising in her voice.

The traffic moving into and out of the city was heavy and it was close to nine before they arrived at the house, a twenties semi-detached in a quiet street with trees, leafless still, at frequent intervals. Cars parked either side.

There was a van immediately outside the house with decorating paraphernalia in the rear, partly covered by a paint-splodged sheet. The man who came to the door was wearing off-white dungarees, speckled red, blue and green.

‘Mr Peters?'

He looked Will and Helen up and down, as if slowly making up his mind. Then he stepped back and held the door wide. ‘You'd best come in. Don't want everyone knowing our business up and down the street.'

One wall of the room into which he led them was a virtual shrine to Sharon when she'd been alive, photographs almost floor to ceiling.

‘The wife's out,' Peters said. ‘Dropping off our other girl at school. Usually goes and does a bit of shopping after that.'

Our other girl, Will was thinking. Of course, to them she's still alive.

‘You know why we're here?' Helen asked.

‘Something to do with that bastard getting shot, I imagine.'

‘You know about it, then?'

‘Not at first, no. One of neighbours come round and told us. Saw it, like, on TV.'

‘And you didn't know anything about it till then?'

‘Course not, what d'you think?'

‘To be frank, Mr Peters,' Will said, ‘we think someone paid to have Fraser killed.'

‘You reckon?' Peters laughed. ‘Well, I'll tell you what, if they'd come round here asking for a few quid toward it, I'd have shelled out double-quick. What he did to our Sharon, shooting's too good for him.' Looking at Will, he narrowed his eyes. ‘Quick was it?'

‘I think so, yes.'

‘More's the sodding pity.'

They talked to him for three-quarters of an hour, pushing and prodding, back and forth over the same ground, but if he had anything to give away, it never showed.

Just as they were on the point of leaving, a key turned in the front door and Mrs Peters stepped through into the hall, shopping bags in both hands. One look at her husband, another at Will and Helen and the bags dropped to the floor. ‘Oh Christ, they know, don't they? They bloody know.'

Will contacted the local police station and arranged for an interview room to be placed at their disposal. Donald and Lydia Peters were questioned separately and together, always with a lawyer present. After her initial outburst, Lydia would say nothing; Donald, brazening it out, would not say a great deal more. Without an admission, without tangible evidence – letters, emails, recordings of phone calls – their involvement in Fraser's murder would be difficult to prove. All they had was the wife's slip of the tongue.
They know, dont they?
In a court of law, it could have meant anything.

Their one chance was a court order to examine the Peterses' bank records, turn their finances inside out. If they had, indeed, paid to have Fraser killed, the money would have had to have come from somewhere. Unless they'd been especially careful. Unless it had come from other sources. Family. Friends.

Will knew full well that if he went to the Crown Prosecution Service with what they had now, they'd laugh in his face.

*

It had taken a little time for Malkin to gain Lisa's confidence enough for her to take him to see Jermaine. Jermaine having served his time for attempted burglary and been released into the care of his probation officer, one of the conditions that he move away from where he'd been living, steer clear of his former friends. Where Lisa took Malkin was no more than ten miles away, Sutton-in-Ashfield, Jermaine's gran's.

Jermaine and Malkin sat in the small front room, the parlour his gran had called it, Lisa and the old lady in the other room, watching TV.

Jermaine was fidgeting constantly, never still.

‘What you said in court,' Malkin asked, ‘about having been to Silver's place before, was that true?'

‘Course it was true. No one fuckin' believed it, though, did they?'

‘You'd both been there? You and Wayne?'

‘Yeah. What's this all about, anyway? What's it matter now?'

‘Why were you there, Jermaine?'

‘What d'you mean, why?'

‘I mean Alan Silver's a has-been in his sixties and you're what? Seventeen. I wouldn't have thought you'd got a lot to talk about, a lot of common ground.'

Jermaine's head swung from side to side. ‘He was all right, you know, not stuck up, not tight. Plenty to drink, yeah? Southern Comfort, that's what he liked.'

‘And money? He gave you money?'

Now Jermaine was staring at the floor, not wanting to look Malkin in the eye.

‘He gave you money?' Malkin said again.

‘He gave Wayne money.' Jermaine's voice was little more than a whisper.

‘Why did he give Wayne money, Jermaine? Why did he give—'

‘For sucking his cock,' Jermaine suddenly shouted. ‘Why d'you think?'

Just for an instant, Malkin closed his eyes. ‘And that's why you went back?' he said.

‘No. We went back to rip him off, didn't we? Fucking queer!'

Malkin leaned, almost imperceptibly, forward. ‘Silver's house,' he said. ‘If I gave you some paper, paper and a pencil, d'you think you could draw me some kind of plan of the inside?'

*

‘Look,' Will called across the office. ‘Take a look at this.'

Helen pushed aside what she was doing and made her way to where Will was sitting at the computer.

‘There, you see. This has been nagging at me and there it is. Two years ago. Lincoln. This man Royston Davies. Nightclub bouncer. Found dead in the back of a taxi. Single bullet through the head. 9mm.'

‘All right,' Helen said. ‘I see the connection.'

‘Just wait. There's more.' Will scrolled down the page. ‘See. That was February. The August before there was a fracas outside the club where Davies was working. Nineteen-year-old youth was struck with something hard enough to put him into hospital. Bottle, baseball bat. Went into a coma and never came out of it.' Will closed the file. ‘I rang someone I know at Lincoln this morning. Seems Davies was brought in for questioning, quite a few witnesses pointing the finger, but they never got enough to make a case.'

‘Wait, wait. Wait a minute.' Helen held both hands in front of her, palms out, as if to ward off the idea. ‘What you're suggesting, unless I've got this wrong, what you're saying, there's someone out there, some professional assassin, some hitman, specialising in taking out people who've killed and got away with it. Is that it?'

‘That's it exactly.'

‘You're crazy.'

‘Why? Look at it, look at the evidence.'

‘Will, there is no evidence. Not of what you're saying.'

‘What is it then?'

‘Coincidence.'

‘And if I could show otherwise?'

‘How?'

‘If these weren't the only two instances, would you believe me then?'

‘You telling me there are more?'

‘I don't know yet. But I can find out.'

Helen laughed and pushed a hand back through her hair. ‘Tell you what, Will, when you do, let me know.'

He watched her walk, still laughing, back across the room.

*

Alan Silver's house was pitched between Colston Bassett and Harby, on the western edge of the Vale of Belvoir. Nice country. Hunting country, when the time was right.

Malkin had driven past it several times, learning the lie of the land. Earlier that evening, the light fading, he had parked close by the canal and made his way across the fields. Now he was there again, close to midnight, tracing a path back between the trees.

Cold, he thought, pausing at a field end to glance up at the sky. Cold enough for snow.

*

At just about the time Malkin had made his first visit to Alan Silver's house, Lorraine had been sitting with her feet up on the settee, watching television, one of those chat shows Will abhorred.
Richard
&
Judy
?
Richard
&
Jane
?

He was in the other room, leafing through the paper, when she called him.

‘Look. That man who shot the boy trying to burgle him. The one there was all the fuss about, remember?'

Will remembered.

‘He's on now.'