Easy Meat (29 page)

“And the travel company, they’ve reported this to the local police or whatever?”

Khan shook his head. “Apparently they’re not too concerned. She left a note for the tour guide, saying she had no complaints about what was happening, it simply wasn’t what she’d had in mind. She was going to go off, spend the rest of the week on her own.”

“Checked out of the hotel?”

“That afternoon.”

“Which means she could be anywhere.”

“Do you think we should contact the Madrid police, sir? Interpol, perhaps?”

Giving himself room to think, Resnick walked slowly over to where the kettle was standing, lifted it to test the weight, make sure there was water enough, then set it to boil. “I think what we’ll do is send you down to Rhossili Bay after all.” There was a faint ring as, along the room, Naylor set down the phone. “Kevin can go with you. Dig out Paul Matthews, see what he’s got to say about Elizabeth Peck, why she might have wanted to talk so urgently to Aston. Leave now, you can be down there for this evening. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.” Khan had promised he would go with Jill to the Cookie Club, but he would find a way of making it up to her. Besides, they’d been going together long enough now for her to get used to the fact that with a job like his, plans sometimes had to be changed, last minute.

“Kevin,” Resnick said, “how’s your Welsh?”

Divine bounded up the stairs like an oversized Rottweiler with his eyes on the back of an intruder’s bare and fleshy thigh. So intent was he on finding Resnick that he cannoned into a hazy-looking Millington, doing his level best to remember what it was Madeleine had told him not to come home without buying.

“Hey up, youth!” the sergeant exclaimed, spun half around and rubbing his arm. “What’s got up your backside all of a sudden?”

“The boss,” Divine gasped. “He still around?”

“Off to see DI Woolmer, Special Branch. Only this minute left. Might catch him in car-park if you’re sharp.”

Divine didn’t need any second urging. Back down the stairs three and four at a time, he was through the front entrance and waving both arms as Resnick indicated right to pull out onto Derby Road.

“Won the lottery, Mark?” Resnick asked, lowering his window.

“It’s the cassette, boss. The one as was found on the Embankment, near Aston’s body.”

“Music, isn’t it? Heavy metal, isn’t that what you said?”

Divine was still fighting to get back his breath. “Aye, well, sent it off to one of our tame boffins just in case. What he’s found, recorded over, but none too well, are bits of talking, speech like. This bloke going on about an Englishman’s birthright, white power’n crap like that.”

“Well,” Resnick said, a wry smile on his lips, “I’m glad you think it’s all crap, Mark. Here, you’d best jump in.”

Chesney Woolmer was the inspector in charge of the local Special Branch team, two sergeants and a dozen officers under him. Affable, if a little offhand, a portly man with receding hair, he listened to the cleaned-up version of the tape, some fifteen minutes of blinkered ranting which culminated in some ragged cheering and an even more motley version of “God Save the Queen.”

“Her Majesty,” Woolmer suggested, “would be shocked and surprised if she knew the amount of odious bollocks that went on in her name.”

Resnick asked him if he recognized the voice.

“Not right off. Besides, the quality leaves a lot to be desired. But if you’re happy to leave it with me, I’ll get some of my lads to have a listen. Compare it to what we’ve got.”

“And there’s no way of telling where it might have been recorded?”

Woolmer shook his head. “Some bloke with his own little tape machine, some BNP rally or other. Could be local, but who’s to say? Fairly innocuous by their standards, too.”

“We’ve no way of proving the tape was dropped by the people who attacked Aston, but, all other things being equal, it seems likely. Too much of a coincidence to ignore.”

“Well,” said Woolmer, reaching several perforated sheets of computer printout from his desk, “what I can let you have is a list of known right-wing activists in the area. Mansfield, Sutton, Ilkeston, Heanor, they’ll likely be your best bets. Any who’ve got an association with C18, that’s shown. Check these against the other names that’ve been thrown up by the inquiry, you might strike lucky. Failing that, there’s the soccer connection.”

Resnick took the list and passed it across to Divine. “If we decide to move in, knock on a few doors, see what we can turn up that way, you think you might have more than a passing interest in whatever we come across?”

Woolmer smiled. “Always grateful, Charlie, for any little tidbit you care to throw our way.”

“Ah, I was thinking of more active participation than that.”

“Bodies on the ground?”

“Just for a day or two, any you could spare.”

“Give us a bell tomorrow, first thing. If there’s anyone I can lose, short of having it checked off as overtime, I’ll tell you.” Woolmer grinned broadly. “Never like to miss a chance to give some of our white supremacist friends a spin.” He walked with Resnick and Divine towards the door. “Last time we did, we turned up bomb-making equipment and a Russian-made rifle that had made its way to Mansfield Woodhouse by way of Iran and the UDF.”

Gerry Hovenden throttled down and brought the bike through a slow curve that ended outside the house where Frank Miller lived. Couple of years now, him and Frank would spend Saturdays at the match, away games especially, those were the ones they didn’t like to miss. Few pints beforehand, more than a few after the final whistle. Blokes to meet. Once in a while it turned heavy and then it was well good, worth the journey—that Frank, didn’t know his own strength.

“This is it.” Removing his helmet, Hovenden nodded towards a two-story brick building, its front door square onto the street; a hand-lettered sign in the frosted door glass, telling callers to go round to the back.

Shane, spare helmet Gerry always lent him in one hand, waited while he lifted the bike onto its stand.

“Frank?” Hovenden pushed at the back door and as usual it swung inwards, unlocked. What cretin’d be fool enough to burgle Frank Miller?

“Frank? ’S Gerry.”

“Through here.” There was music coming from the front of the house, heavily amplified rock.

Hovenden entered, nodding for Shane to follow. The back room was a kitchen, blackened chip pan on the cooker, mugs and plates overflowing the sink. Old newspapers spread across the table, more in piles on the floor. A shelf with books about the SAS and the Falklands, the Second World War.

“Bit of a reader, is he?” Shane asked.

Hovenden didn’t reply.

Frank Miller was standing in the middle of the front room, bare to the waist save for tattoos on his back and arms, St. George, a Union Jack. He had pushed back to the wall the one piece of furniture in the room, a leather settee one of his bailiff pals had done him a deal on, and had been doing pushups with alternate hands. There was a television set on the floor, a VCR, a four-section Marantz stereo with speakers mounted high on the ceiling. Right then it was playing Saxon,
Gods of War.

Miller turned down the volume, but not much. He grinned at Hovenden, nodded abruptly at Shane. “Beer?” he asked.

“Yeh,” Hovenden said. “Thanks.”

“Why don’t you get a couple of cans, eh, Shane? In the fridge.”

The moment he was out of the room, Miller grabbed Hovenden between his legs and began to twist. “What is it with you two, anyway?” Miller hissed. “In and out one another’s pockets, the whole fuckin’ time, like a couple of fairies.”

“Christ, Frank, leggo!” Tears in his eyes already. “It’s nothin’ like that, honest.”

“It better not fuckin’ be.”

“Be what?” Shane asked, leaning against the doorway, three cans of Special Brew balanced on two hands.

“Never you fucking mind.”

Shane stared at him, Miller staring back. You fat bastard, Shane was thinking, you reckon I’m afraid of you like all the rest. And one of these days you’re going to have to learn it just ain’t true.

“You got a problem,” Miller asked, half a pace towards him.

“Maybe, yeah?”

“What’s that, then?”

“That,” Shane said, nodding towards the speakers. “It’s a fuckin’ row.”

“No.” Miller laughed. “That’s Saxon. They’re the best.” But he turned it down some more and Shane tossed him a beer and all three of them drank and started to chat and for now everything was cool.

Thirty-four

Days into the inquiry, the photographs of Bill Aston’s beaten body had been in danger of becoming little more than part of the incident room decor, scarcely deserving a second glance. But now with some concrete information from Special Branch and the Football Intelligence Unit to work on, potential suspects to target, the adrenaline was pumping again, spirits were high, voices boisterous and loud. Aside from the regular squad assigned to the murder inquiry, there were six officers from Special Branch, a further six from the Support Department, a dozen more drafted in from other duties—among these, two out of Vice, one of them Sharon Garnett.

The map showing a thirty-mile radius out from the city had been newly marked with pins in three distinct colors: blue for the Mansfield area to the north, green for Ilkeston to the west, red for addresses within the city boundary itself. Along with Lynn Kellogg, Sharon would be working with Reg Cossall in the green team, Graham Millington was supervising red; Chesney Woolmer, invited in by Resnick to assist with the briefing, would be running blue.

“Some of these people we’re going to interview,” Woolmer said, “may surprise you. Some will look like nice law-abiding insurance salesmen with a wife who works part-time and the regulation two point-whatever kids. Likely not what you’re expecting at all. That doesn’t mean they haven’t got regular subscriptions to a magazine with step-by-step instructions on how to construct a letter bomb and ideas of where to send it. Other times, you’ll open the door to three bloody great Alsatians and a bloke with a tattooed beer-gut hanging over his jeans and you’ll think, okay, stupid fat sod, I know where I am here. Don’t be fooled. These are people—some of them—capable of running a network of like-minded souls that takes in not just this country, but most of mainland Europe as well. Don’t underestimate them. And don’t turn your back on the sodding dogs.”

Resnick stepped forward into the ensuing laughter. “Remember we haven’t got warrants here, we’re not going barging in. What we’re doing is asking questions, establishing links—where were they the night of Aston’s murder, where did they go drinking, where were their mates?”

“But if you do get inside,” Woolmer again. “If you are invited in, be aware, keep your eyes skinned, anything that might be of potential interest to the Branch, I want to know.”

“All right,” said Resnick, “any more questions?”

There were none: within three minutes the room had cleared. What questions there were snagged in Resnick’s mind: he knew much of the circumstantial evidence pointed to a vicious, random attack—the spiraling pattern of footprints, the nature of the blows—and it seemed certain there had been a gang of probably drunken, possibly violent youths in the vicinity at the appropriate time, and yet … And yet … he could not let go of the idea that what had happened to Bill Aston had its roots in something more specific, more personal than a random attack in which he was a victim solely by chance and circumstance.

Resnick looked again at the blurred black-and-white images on the wall. Was it only a kind of sentimentality that urged him to see Aston’s death as having had reason and purpose, that and nothing more? He looked at his watch: Khan and Naylor should be making contact with Paul Matthews at any time. There were other avenues still open.

Khan and Naylor had spent the night in a B&B in Swansea, close by the old docks, now a smart new marina surrounded by brightly painted rows of flats and a heritage trail. Their landlady had insisted on serving them eggs and bacon accompanied by lava bread. “It’s a delicacy, see. Local.” Whatever it was, Kevin Naylor thought, it wasn’t bread. Black and somewhat slimy, it tasted suspiciously of whelks. As soon as they stepped outside the front door into the bright spring day, they could clearly see both hills and sea. Rhossili Bay was little more than fifteen miles along the Gower Peninsula.

Paul Matthews’s aunt didn’t disappoint. Her cottage was at the end of a rutted lane outside Llangennith, on the north edge of the Rhossili Downs. Two rusted cars lay on their sides, the new year’s nettles growing up around them. A van, unlicensed, but apparently still running, sat by the side gate, a black-and-white collie growling at the two detectives through bared teeth.

The aunt walked out into the yard, scattering chickens from around her slippered feet. Face brown and lined beyond her years, hair falling thinly away from a wispy bun, she was wearing an apron with a small floral print and muttering in Welsh.

“It’s not lost you are, is it?” she asked, lapsing into English.

When they assured her they were far from lost and explained why they were there, she insisted on sitting them down and making them tea. Paul, she said, had gone off early, down towards the bay most likely; that was what he’d done most days since he’d come.

“Something wrong with that boy,” she told them. “Not right in the head. Oh, I don’t mean he’s crazy, mind. Not like that. But troubled.” She smiled at them hopefully. “Anything you can do now, to ease his mind.”

They found him on a high reach of cliff, gulls riding the currents above his head and wheeling down to where they were nesting on the almost sheer face of rock.

For a fearful moment Naylor thought that he was poised to jump, but he was simply standing, staring out at the dark smudge of a tanker slow-sliding down the horizon, north to south.

“Mr. Matthews,” Khan said, speaking quietly, not wishing to startle. “Paul.”

He didn’t seem surprised to see Khan there, simply nodded towards him and Naylor and went back to looking out to sea. The wind was beginning to whip the tops of the waves into crescents of foam. On the horizon, the ship seemed scarcely to have moved.