Dark Briggate Blues
Read Dark Briggate Blues Online
Authors: Chris Nickson
‘The author powerfully evokes a sense of time and place with all the detailed and meticulous research he has carried out for this very suspenseful and well plotted story of corruption and murder.’
Eurocrime
‘[A] convincing depiction of late-medieval England makes this a satisfying comfort read.’
Publishers Weekly
‘[Nickson] makes us feels as though we are living what seems like a fourteenth-century version of dystopia, giving this remarkable novel a powerful immediacy.’
Booklist
(starred review)
To Leeds Book Club, the little book club that could. With gratitude.
Praise for the Crooked Spire by Chris Nickson
Part Two Someone To Watch Over Me
Part Three Round About Midnight
PRELUDE TO A KISS
Leeds, 1954
In the September evening light, Dan Markham paused at the corner of Byron Street, his key in the door of the Ford Anglia.
Over the road, on Regent Street, an ambulance stood outside Hart Ford, lights flashing in the sunlight, the back doors open wide, three black police cars beside it. He stood for a moment, watching the scene until one of the policemen glanced up, a familiar face staring at him.
Markham started the engine and drove away.
***
The next morning he’d only been in the office for five minutes when the door opened and Detective Sergeant Baker walked in, wheezing from the stairs and flopping into a chair. The man looked as if he’d been up all night, unshaven and worn, eyes like flint. He smelt of stale tobacco, a ring of grime around his shirt collar. A faded tea stain coloured the front of his mackintosh. He took off his hat, straightened the brim and placed it on his lap.
‘I saw you down by Hart Ford yesterday evening. Do you know what happened there?’
‘No.’ A burglary, he’d thought, or someone injured. He hadn’t heard the news on the Home Service or seen a newspaper.
‘Someone killed Freddie Hart,’ Baker told him. ‘You know who that is, don’t you?’
‘Freddie Hart?’ No, Markham thought. That wasn’t possible. That just wasn’t possible.
‘Of course you do, since his wife hired you.’ The sergeant stared at him. ‘Want to tell me what you were doing there, lad?’
‘I was working.’ He could feel his heart thudding, palms slick.
Baker ran his hands down his face and sighed.
‘Do I look like I came in on the milk train? I know you were bloody working. I want to know
what
you were doing, where you’d been and why you were parked there.’
Markham lit a cigarette. It gave him a few seconds to compose his thoughts. The truth was innocent enough.
‘I’d followed one of Hart’s employees home.’
‘Who?’ Baker asked.
‘A girl called Annie Willis. She’s the secretary, lives in Meanwood. I’d been on the bus. I was walking back to my car.’
‘That’s better.’ The man’s mouth smiled but his eyes showed nothing. ‘Now, why were you after her?’
‘I needed to find out who she was. Hart had taken her out after work on Saturday.’
‘Oh aye? And what business is that of yours? Or were you just being a nosy parker?’
‘Mrs Hart thought her husband was having a fling with someone. I’m an enquiry agent, that’s what I do. You know that.’
‘Divorce jobbie, was it?’ Baker asked with contempt.
‘She wanted me to find out what’s going on.’ The sergeant raised a thick eyebrow disbelievingly. ‘After that it’s her problem.’
‘She also said you happened to be in the Harewood Arms in Follifoot on Sunday when she and Mr Hart arrived. Bit of a coincidence isn’t it? Off your patch, lad. You’ve never struck me as the country pub type.’
‘Hart had taken the secretary there the night before. I wanted to hear if anyone was talking about him.’
‘Too bloody clever by half in the end, weren’t you?’ Baker sat forward and placed his palms on the desk. ‘A little while after the business closed last night, someone came to see Mr. Hart and shot him.’ He paused. ‘Now, you’re working for the wife, who thinks he’s got a bit on the side. Maybe she just decided she was better off rid of him and paid you to do it.’ His voice grew colder as he spoke. ‘I know what you lot are like in this line of work. Bastards, all of you. I daresay you’d be willing to pull the trigger if the price was right.’ Markham shook his head. He felt a bead of sweat run down his back. ‘No one’s straight in your game, lad, not if they want to make a bob. Everybody lies.’
‘Look, I’m sorry about Freddie Hart,’ Markham said. ‘But it wasn’t anything to do with me.’
‘Have you ever seen someone who’s been shot?’
‘No.’
‘Of course you haven’t, you were too young for the war. I did.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘There are prettier sights in the world. I saw the bullet hole. Pound to a penny it was a .
38
calibre. Close range.’
‘There are still plenty of guns floating around from the war,’ Markham said. ‘Every officer had a sidearm.’
‘Aye, and they were easy enough to buy and smuggle.’ Baker ran a hand across his chin. ‘You bring one back from National Service, did you?’
‘No. I wasn’t an officer.’
‘Don’t avoid the bloody question.’
‘I don’t have a gun.’
‘But they taught you to shoot, didn’t they?’
‘Of course,’ he answered. It was part of basic training. ‘Me and most of the men in the country.’
‘Be careful,’ the detective warned. ‘I’ve been up since yesterday morning and my temper’s fraying.’
‘I didn’t kill Freddie Hart,’ Markham repeated. ‘Is that plain enough for you? I followed the girl on a bus to Meanwood. She lives at
15
Bentley Grove. Then I bought cigarettes at the shop at the end of the street. The woman will remember me. I had to wait a quarter of an hour for the bus back.’
Baker nodded. ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll be checking all that. And to see if that lass you were trailing had a jealous boyfriend of her own.’ He placed the hat back on his head and pushed himself upright. ‘I don’t like what you do. It’s a grubby trade. Enquiry agent.’ He almost spat the words. ‘Someone has to suffer for you to make money. I don’t like that at all.’
Markham sat behind the desk after he’d gone, smoking a cigarette until it burned hot in his mouth. He ground it out in the ashtray and lit another, waiting until he was convinced that Baker wouldn’t return. Finally he pulled the bottom drawer open. It was where he kept the Webley, the one he’d brought back from his time in Germany.
The drawer was empty.
Frantic, he scrambled around, feeling the panic rise as he ransacked the rest of the desk. It had been there on Saturday: he’d seen it.
He looked again. The filing cabinets, the cupboard in the corner.
No gun. Nothing else was missing.
Penny to a pound the bullet had been a .
38
, Baker said. The same ammunition as the Webley. And his fingerprints were on that revolver.
Someone was setting him up.
Someone had been in his office and taken the gun.
Why? Who?
He needed answers. He needed to talk to Joanna Hart.
BLUES IN THE NIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
She’d arrived the Friday before, in the middle of a balmy afternoon. Markham had the windows open in the office to draw in a little breeze. The third of September, a date everyone remembered, the day Britain went to war with Nazi Germany, fifteen years before. When he went out for his dinner he’d seen all the memories and loss on the faces.
She was waiting outside the office on Albion Place when he returned, dressed in a royal blue skirt, a white blouse and a hip-length jacket, the bag dangling from her hand. Her blonde hair set in short, neat waves.
‘Can I help you?’ Markham asked, bringing the keys from his pocket.
‘I’m looking for Mr Markham.’ It was a cultured voice. Expensively educated. Good breeding, his mother would have called it.
‘I’m Dan Markham. What can I do for you?’ He unlocked the door and she stood at the entrance, assessing the room with its worn lino floor and view of the old grey roof tiles before pursing her lips in disapproval. ‘Please, sit down, Mrs …?’
‘Jones,’ she answered and he immediately knew what the job would be. Divorce. They always used the same names – Smith, Jones, Brown – as if they offered protection.
The woman perched on the chair and removed her gloves. About thirty, he guessed, with a porcelain complexion, her lips a deep, emphatic red. The clothes looked ordinary enough, but they hadn’t come off the rack at Marshall’s; some seamstress in a little shop had worked long and hard to make them. She had style. And money.
‘Well, Mrs Jones …’
‘Forgive me.’ She lowered her eyes for a moment. ‘I’ve never met an enquiry agent before.’
He gave a gentle, reassuring smile. ‘Nothing like an American private detective from the films, I’m afraid.’ His office was an unprepossessing room that had probably looked exactly the same before the war.
She hesitated. ‘It’s just that you’re rather young.’
How long until they stopped saying that, he wondered?
‘I’ve spent time in military intelligence and I’ve been doing this for four years now,’ he told her with a smile. ‘I’m a professional. And I’m good at what I do, Mrs Jones.’
This was the crux, the moment. Either she’d leave now or she’d tell him everything. She didn’t move. After a moment she took a breath.
‘I’m sure my husband’s having an affair.’ The women always blurted out the words. With men he had to work, to coax it out of them piece by piece, as if the admission cost them all their pride.
‘Why do you think that?’ He took out the pack of cigarettes and offered her one. She moved to take it, leaning forward into the match flame.
‘He’s out almost every night. I’ve smelt perfume on him. He doesn’t seem to want to spend time with me any more.’
‘Have you talked to him about it?’
‘God no. Of course not.’ She seemed horrified at the suggestion. ‘How could I?’
‘How long have you been married, Mrs Jones?’
‘Five years.’ She raised her head to look at him. ‘Six in January.’
‘And when did your husband’s behaviour change?’
‘About two months ago,’ she answered after some thought. ‘Just after that hot weekend we had during Wimbledon.’
The end of June. He made a note on the pad.
‘Did anything unusual happen during that time?’
‘Not that I can think of.’ Now she’d begun, her gaze was squarely on his face.
‘What does your husband do?’
‘He owns an agency that sells motor cars.’
That explained the money. Cars were big business these days.
‘And you’d like me to see if he’s having an affair.’
‘I’m certain he’s having one, Mr Markham.’ Her eyes blazed. ‘I want to know who with.’
‘I have to tell you, Mrs Jones, divorce is a messy business.’
‘Oh, I don’t want to divorce him.’ Her voice turned cold. ‘I want a hold over him.’
***
It took two more cigarettes to draw all the details from her. Her real name first – Joanna Hart. No children. A house out in Alwoodley. A golden life.