Least of Evils (12 page)

This time Ketley was shaken. DS Northcott, who had watched him keenly throughout, caught a tiny wince in his body, even though his face remained as unyielding as ever. Ketley blinked those sinister light-blue eyes and said, ‘2004 is a long time ago. And I've no idea what you're talking about.'

‘Oh, but you have, Ketley. The cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay. Twenty-three deaths in one appalling night, all down to you.'

‘Perhaps you need to be reminded that a man has already been convicted of the manslaughter of those people. A man I have never even met.'

‘Lin Liang Ren. Now serving fourteen years. But no one thinks he was the only person involved in what happened that night.'

‘But the case has been closed. Things move on, Detective Inspector Peach.'

‘The case remains open. Money's no object to the Special Branch, lucky buggers. They'll get you, sooner rather than later. And then lots of other things will come out, once the rats begin to leave your sinking ship. I look forward to that. In the meantime, keep your filthy fingers off our Brunton patch, please. And don't ring me about a round of golf: I play with almost anyone, but even pigs find some company beneath them.'

He was gone before Oliver Ketley could produce any appropriate words of dismissal. They were almost back at the station before Clyde Northcott said from behind the wheel, ‘Do you really not feel in any danger from him?'

Percy Peach allowed himself a grim smile. ‘I'm relying on the fact that he doesn't know Tommy Bloody Tucker's in charge of CID.'

As Oliver Ketley reviewed once again his connections with that awful February night of 2004, his rival racketeer Jack Burgess was covering his traces in a more contemporary crisis.

The police had that morning revealed they had arrested a group of Asian men in Rochdale who had been systematically ‘grooming' white girls of thirteen and fourteen for prostitution. It would cut off a substantial source of income for Burgess, who had financed the organization and made substantial profits from it. But at the moment he was more concerned that the police could not connect it with him.

‘Is there any way they can show a link between us and the Rochdale group?' he asked Geoffrey Day.

‘No. I paid those men myself, in cash. It was local; we didn't need any other link.'

‘Will they talk? Those Pakis I mean, now they're under arrest?'

‘No way. Most of them didn't know where the money was coming from and had the good sense not to ask. We ran an incentive scheme: the more girls they delivered, the more they were paid. In effect they were paid on commission. And paid bloody well. It was a lucrative enterprise for them as well as for us.'

Burgess relaxed a little. ‘Sex always is, Geoff. Always will be. You just identify the demand and supply it. People will always pay.'

‘There's just one man who knows the money came from us. He was the intermediary; he was our contact with the men who found the girls and did the grooming.'

‘And boys. There's plenty of demand for them, in our enlightened society.'

Geoff Day shook his head. ‘Plenty of demand, but a fair supply. The rent boys don't charge enough. There isn't the same profit margin.' He spoke as dispassionately as a marketing man in a retail store. ‘Ketley's organization runs a few boys' groups in Liverpool, but the vast majority of his grooming empire is based on young girls; they're easier to come by than they used to be. And they pay better.'

‘Speaking of Ketley, hasn't he burned his fingers with his grooming rings? There have been three cases in the Brunton area since he moved his headquarters there.'

Day smiled. Burgess kept his eye on everything his rival did, especially when he came unstuck. ‘They haven't even come near Ketley. He runs as tight a ship as you do. The child protection people spot lots of Asian men approaching and grooming under-age girls, but that's as far as they get. Plenty of convictions for sexual activity with children and supplying drugs to them. The men involved get pretty heavy sentences at Preston Crown Court. But the police never get to the big boys who are doing the systematic organization and supplying men with young, mainly white girls.'

Jack Burgess became thoughtful, as he usually did when they reached the subject of Oliver Ketley. It worried Geoffrey Day, because it was the one area where you couldn't rely on the boss to be totally objective. Usually he assessed risk and reward with cold calculation, his aim always being maximum reward with minimum risk to himself and his organization. But his contest with Ketley was more personal, and in Day's experience when things became personal objectivity suffered. He would be glad when the governor's scheme to eliminate Ketley and take over his empire was safely achieved.

As if he read the thought, Burgess now said, ‘Any news on George French? Do we know how near he is to success?'

‘No word.' Neither of them mentioned the killing of Ketley, almost as if they were superstitious that putting it into words would endanger the mission. ‘French is a loner, like all contract killers. He'll proceed in his own way, but in the end he'll give us what we want. He'll plan to ensure the least risk for him, but that suits us as well. He knows Ketley's weaknesses, like his liking for shoving his hand up the newest skirt in the vicinity, and he'll use them if it gives him an opportunity. We don't want this traced back to you. That means it must be efficient and anonymous. But Ketley's well guarded. French will need to wait for his opportunity rather than try to force it.'

Burgess nodded ruefully. He recognized that George French was the best in his specialized business, but he was used to being able to prod those he hired. ‘We'll need to replace our Rochdale business by taking over some of Ketley's. Let's hope French delivers soon.'

NINE

P
ercy Peach was a man who constantly startled those around him. The Brunton criminal fraternity found he turned up in unexpected places and knew all sorts of unexpected things. His colleagues in Brunton CID had ceased to be surprised about that. But they had speculated for several years about who would secure the permanent affections of DS Lucy Blake, the bright young woman with the chestnut hair, ultramarine eyes and disturbing curves, who figured in the sexual fantasies of all ranks. There was amazement when this most delicious of prizes was secured by the bald, round-faced, divorced Percy Peach, a man ten years her senior.

For the Brunton public at large, bred on Northern comics and traditional humour, the most surprising thing of all about Peach would have been something quite different and altogether more mundane. DCI Peach loved his mother-in-law and she returned his feelings in spades.

Long before Percy had roared like a comet into her life, the then Lucy Blake had known that her mother was a remarkable woman. What she had not expected was that the man who had seemed initially to be the embodiment of all the traditional male prejudices should also find Agnes Blake remarkable. Still less had she expected her mother to trumpet the virtues of this unpromising-looking candidate as the ideal husband for her only and much-cherished daughter.

It had helped that Percy Peach was a prominent local cricketer, a fleet-footed batsman who regularly made half-centuries in the Lancashire League, where each team employed an eminent professional and the standard of cricket was very high. Agnes had been delighted to find that the man universally known in the police force as ‘Percy' had the initials D.C.S. He had been christened Denis Charles Scott by a cricket-mad father, who had been a youngster alongside the young Denis Compton in Hitler's war.

A very young Agnes had been taken to Old Trafford by her father in 1948 to see Compton take on the Australians. He had been hit on the head and carried bleeding from the field, but had insisted on returning with a mere sticking plaster on the stitched wound – no helmets and no health and safety rules in the days of Denis. He had then scored 145 and etched himself for ever in the memory of the child Agnes. To have a man named after her hero as first the boyfriend and now the husband of Lucy was a dream fulfilled for a lively widow now entering her seventies.

For the first time in several months, Percy and Lucy were visiting her mother in her cosy cottage at the base of the broad flank of Longridge Fell, to assist in the splendid ritual of high tea. Agnes loved baking and Percy loved whatever she baked. After years of coping with a daughter who protested that she must watch her weight, Mrs Blake found it bliss indeed to have a man who smacked his lips and never mentioned calories.

And Percy knew his part in this cosy domestic drama. He stepped into the tiny dining room which was almost filled by the fully extended table, groaning under the goodies assembled upon it by their shyly smiling hostess. There were home-roasted ham and thinly sliced brown and white bread, buttered scones and strawberry jam, queen cakes, sponge cake, rich fruit cake. Percy stopped spellbound before the feast. ‘You've surpassed yourself, Mrs B. We wouldn't have any crime in the world, if people could all eat here!'

‘Go on with yer, Percy.' Agnes beamed her approval of her son-in-law and stood for a moment with her weight on one foot, as she had done as a blushing seventeen-year-old when a boy complimented her.

‘We certainly wouldn't have the energy to chase them, if all the police ate here,' said her daughter more soberly. It was one of the great delights of her life to see the two people she loved most in the world getting on so well together, but they were a formidable alliance, when they ganged up on her. She would try to control their wilder sallies during the meal and its aftermath.

There was no immediate problem. Percy had lived alone for ten years after the break-up of his short-lived first marriage and existed largely upon takeaways. His admiration for Agnes's baking was genuine and profound. He was a bouncy little figure, certainly not skinny, but without the paunch he should have been developing at thirty-nine. Whatever he ate, he never put a pound on, Lucy had learned resentfully. He now proceeded to do ample justice to the efforts Agnes had made for him. ‘That Nigella Lawson's not bad, in her own way,' he said, carefully damning the delectable kitchen goddess with faint praise. ‘But she could learn a thing or two from you, Mrs B, when it comes to baking.'

Agnes's giggle was positively adolescent, her daughter thought uncharitably. ‘I'll brew the tea, Mum. That's if it's safe to leave you two lovebirds alone for two minutes.'

‘Just you watch your tongue, our Lucy,' said Agnes, finding the simulated shock on her son-in-law's face the occasion for a renewed outburst of hilarity.

‘Two minutes wouldn't be long enough for us, love,' said Percy magisterially. ‘Your mum's an artist and artists can't be bound within the squalid restraints of time.'

When Lucy returned with the tea, Percy had been persuaded to accept a second slice of fruit cake and the pair were dissecting England's Ashes triumph in Australia. She proposed an adjournment to the sitting room with their teacups, in the vague and totally mistaken belief that the pair might be easier to control from there.

The technicalities of batsmanship in the five-day game and the one-day game occupied them for some time and excluded her from the conversation. Lucy gazed fondly at the silver-framed photographs in pride of place upon the mantelpiece. The left-hand one showed her dead father in black and white, leaving the field after a notable bowling performance in the Northern League. The right-hand one was in colour and more recent. It showed Percy looking dapper, his red cap a little on one side and a smile of pure pleasure upon his face as he mounted the pavilion steps. Her mother's careful black print below announced that this was ‘D.C.S. Peach, leaving the field after another attractive Lancashire League half-century for East Lancs.'

Perhaps her mother caught the direction of her glance, for she reiterated a familiar theme. ‘You gave up cricket far too early, Percy. I blame our Lucy for that.'

‘He'd retired before I ever met him!' Lucy protested with renewed indignation.

‘Only just! You could have talked him out of it, at that stage.'

‘That's true, I suppose,' Percy pronounced magisterially. ‘I was just putty in your hands, Lucy. A slave of your every whim.' He widened his eyes into a schoolboy's helpless erotic stare and trained them upon the ceiling.

‘You've never been helpless in your life, Percy Peach. You gave up because you bloody well wanted to!'

‘Language, our Lucy! Not in front of the mother who bore you and bred you and baked for you, please! I'm sorry, Mrs B. It must be some of the people she mixes with at work. And the criminals aren't much better, these days.'

Agnes giggled and rocked herself to and fro on the sofa in front of the open fire, delighted by the idea that a one-time mill girl and a woman who still did a part-time stint in the supermarket could be shocked by a simple ‘bloody'.

Lucy tried desperately to shake the pair's mutual delight in her discomfort. ‘Anyway, golf's his game now, Mum. He's doing very well at it, I'm told. I'm thinking of taking it up myself.'

‘GOLF!' Agnes forced many years of derision into that single upper-case syllable. ‘Wash your mouth out, girl. Not a sport at all, that. Don't you dare compare it with cricket!'

‘It's not like the old days, Mum. The top golfers have to be athletes now, like other sportsmen. Tiger Woods is an athlete.'

As soon as the words were out, she knew she had chosen the wrong example. But there was no chance to arrest the derision flooding into every well-loved wrinkle of her mother's face. ‘Don't give me Tiger Woods, young lady. That's golf for you. He's so bored with the game that he has to jump into bed with every young floozie that offers. Goes round
paying
for it! I ask you.'

‘Makes it worse, does it, paying for it?'

‘You can't play cricket for ever,' Peach said hastily. His traditional values told him that a discussion of the precise moral differences between a sportsman paying for sex and leaping gratefully into the many beds which were freely offered would be interesting, but scarcely seemly between mother and daughter. ‘There's nothing worse than seeing your scores decline and hearing people mutter when you go that it should have been two years earlier. Golf isn't the game that cricket is, never will be, because it's much more selfish.' He noted with relief a certain softening in the grim visage of Agnes Blake. ‘But it's a new challenge to take up.'