Least of Evils (20 page)

Peach smiled back at her, as if in appreciation of the way she had handled Northcott's suggestion. ‘That won't be necessary at this stage, Janey. We must be on our way in a moment.'

She didn't like that phrase ‘at this stage'. She was sure he'd thrown it in deliberately to intimidate her. ‘I don't think there's anything else I can tell you.'

‘Except who you think killed Oliver Ketley,' he said quietly.

She was getting used to the way this bouncy little man suddenly flung unexpected and important questions at her. She said calmly, ‘I've thought about it, of course. I expect everyone here has. But I haven't come up with any theories. And as I've indicated, I tend to keep myself to myself, most of the time. So I haven't heard any interesting theories from anyone else.'

Peach handed her a card, ‘When you do, please phone this number immediately.'

‘When', not ‘if', she noticed. She took the card, looked at it for a moment, and nodded.

As the police car wound its way back to Brunton station, Peach said happily, ‘You rather fell for little Mrs Johnson, didn't you, Clyde?'

‘Not at all, sir. I try to remain objective at all times, as you've taught me to do. I do think she's making the best of life in trying circumstances. I think she'd make a good witness in court, if it ever came to it.'

‘As it may do, Clyde, as it may do. Never rule these things out. There's something we need to do when we get back to the nick and the computers, DS Northcott. Can you think what that might be?'

Clyde thought for a moment, then reluctantly shook his head.

Peach smiled happily at such naivety. ‘We need to find out exactly how Sam Johnson, Janey's late husband, died.'

There was a much more pressing and intriguing task waiting for Clyde Northcott at the station.

‘A woman rang in. Wants to speak to you and only you. She wouldn't give me any idea what it was about.' The young uniformed officer didn't make any joking remark about his relationship with this woman, because she was secretly attracted to Clyde herself. She found his tallness, his hardness, his smooth ebony face which might have come from an Egyptian temple, an intriguing combination.

Northcott's past gave him an extra dimension. There were all sorts of rumours around the station of how he was now in the process of redeeming the violent and lurid years he had lived before becoming a copper – rumours invariably gather size and glamour in the telling. And now this mysterious figure was a detective sergeant, one of the youngest in the Brunton establishment. PC Jones had not been long in the force herself; she was still at what her anxious mother called an impressionable age.

If DS Northcott had any inkling of her secret passion for him, he gave no sign of it. He thanked her for the message, gave her no idea who the caller might be, and went away to ring the number in private. He didn't even use the station phones. He went out to the car park, sat astride his Yamaha R1, and dialled the number into his mobile.

He was prepared to convince the woman of his identity, but she recognized his distinctive deep, dark-brown voice immediately. ‘I've got something for you.'

‘How big, Joey? Can it wait? I'm on a big case at the moment.'

‘It's big. Maybe the biggest.'

Snouts always wanted to say that, always wanted to stress the importance of what they had to give. That was important to the price; this was a buyer's market, with the price always in the hands of the copper who was paying for the information. Clyde hissed, ‘Don't piss me about, Joey! How big?'

‘The biggest, Bonzo.' The name she had called him when she wanted to taunt him, in the old days. Her voice dropped lower still. ‘Could be very big, this. It's connected with this Ketley killing. You buying?'

He gave it a couple of seconds of thought. But you couldn't work out the value of this in a phone conversation. It might be vital, as she claimed, or it might be nothing at all. ‘I might be buying, Joey. But only if it's as big as you claim it is. Only if you're not pissing me about!'

‘I wouldn't do that, would I, Bonzo? You wouldn't want to miss this. That's all I'm saying, on the phone.'

‘You in the same place?'

‘Same place. Place where I turned over my new leaf.'

He didn't comment on that. ‘Seven thirty tonight.'

‘Come the back way. I don't want anyone round here seeing me talking to the filth.'

‘I hope it's as good as you say it is, Joey.'

Clyde Northcott stared at his mobile for a moment, not feeling the February cold of the car park as he should have done. It still might be nothing, as he'd said. But he felt the excitement pulsing through him. He wished he could roar away at that moment on the powerful machine beneath him.

FIFTEEN

F
our o'clock was the time. That was the arrangement they'd made, and Greta Ketley knew he would stick to it. She wasn't to phone him. He would ring her; if she didn't answer the first two rings, that would mean that she wasn't alone. He'd put his phone down and not try again. They'd spoken on Sunday, when she'd rung him. Just over two days ago. It seemed much longer.

She listened to the pips announcing the hour on Radio 4. On the last and longest one, which announced the hour exactly, her mobile rang. Bang on time as usual. She placed the tiny box against her ear and rapped out the formula they had always used to confirm that it was safe to go ahead. ‘Greta Ketley here. To whom am I speaking?'

‘Martin Price here,' he said, echoing her formality. And then, in his normal voice, ‘How's it going, my darling?'

‘I can't believe I'm speaking to you! It seems ages. I know it isn't.' Her English was normally so flawless that many took her for a native speaker. Now her attractive Swedish accent came out, as it always did when she was excited, so that Price in his flat felt excited in turn and much closer to her. ‘Have you done the identification?'

‘Yes. I did it yesterday morning.'

‘Was it horrid?'

‘It wasn't pleasant. But I didn't break down. I thought it would take me back to my early days with Oliver, when things had been better, but it didn't. I didn't feel anything, really, except glad that it was over.'

Martin didn't know whether she meant the marriage and her years with Ketley or merely the ordeal of the identification, but he had the sense not to ask. ‘He was shot through the head. Was that very obvious?'

It sounded almost like a professional interest. Martin had seen many dead men in his time, some of them much more gory than the one she had stared at so briefly at the mortuary. Some of them had been his friends, some of them had been enemies killed by his own hand. Greta felt a sharp, guilty thrill in these images of death and violence. ‘I'd expected it to be much worse. They presented the corpse so that the point where the bullet had entered was on the far side from me. They'd brushed his hair over the exit point on his forehead, so that you couldn't see much of it. You told me how they do their best to tidy up the body for identification, didn't you?'

She sounded detached, almost disappointed. Martin said, ‘You'll be relieved that it's over. And I am, on your behalf. I feel guilty sitting here quietly doing nothing, whilst you have all the strain to endure.'

‘Thank you for that. But we agreed it was best this way, didn't we? If we can keep you out of it altogether, that will be best for both of us.' She mouthed the right reassuring phrases, but she resented him sitting quiet and safe whilst she was in the spotlight. She was worried and isolated, despite the knowledge that they were doing the right thing.

‘How did you get on with the CID people?'

‘It went all right, I think. No, I'm sure it did. I got Janey Johnson to sit in with me, as you suggested. The man in charge is very sharp, but he didn't catch me out in anything. He had a big black sergeant with him. He looked ready for a fight, but I think he was quite a softy, really. Perhaps he hasn't dealt much with women before.'

After a single short interview, she had put her finger on one of the few weaknesses in DS Northcott's armoury. Martin Price grinned affectionately: this hard man he had never met would surely be no match for Greta's wiles. ‘Do they suspect you have a lover?' He had meant to be diplomatic. He had intended to wrap up his single great concern in softer phrases than this, but in the end the question had burst out in stark simplicity.

‘No, I'm sure they don't. They didn't even suggest it. We're in the clear, my darling!'

She sounded so sure, so content, that it alarmed him. He said tersely, ‘They'll be back, Greta. They'll talk to everyone around the place, in a murder enquiry. If anyone has the slightest idea that we've been meeting, the police will pick it up. People talk to protect themselves; they're afraid of concealing things.'

‘No one knows about us, my love. If Oliver Ketley didn't find out, rest assured that no one else in this house knows about us.'

That was the best guarantee that they were safe, as she said. If Ketley had known about him, he'd have had a bullet through the back of his head the next day. ‘That sounds good. But don't drop your guard. The police aren't as stupid as people like Oliver claim they are. They're hamstrung by regulations, as he never was. But once they're on a murder hunt, they're efficient and very thorough. Don't underestimate them.'

‘All right, I won't. When can we meet?' The single question she had been dying to ask since the first shrill of her phone.

‘I don't know. It's early days yet. Perhaps at the end of the week, if everything goes well.'

‘If they've arrested someone else by then, you mean?'

‘I don't know quite what I mean, Greta. I just want the heat to be off us before we meet. Once the police discover an eternal triangle, it's the two left standing who become their prime suspects. That's only natural – most of the time, they're right!'

‘I want to feel you against me, my darling. I want to be with you in that bed of yours, running my hands over your back, then clasping you tight as you do whatever you wish to me!'

‘And I want to do that too, my darling! I think about it all the time. Even at the most inconvenient moments!'

He was trying to bring in a little levity, but she scarcely heard him. ‘I want to do everything we've ever done together. And most of all, I want to cling on as hard as I can whilst your whole body goes hard and you come inside me!'

‘Oh, Greta, I need you! More than you can ever imagine. But we shall have the rest of our lives to do these things. We shall be able to show everyone openly what we think of each other, instead of stealing hole-in-the-corner meetings and wondering all the time we're together when they must end. But we must be careful, for just a little while longer. I'll ring again, whenever I think it's safe. Same arrangement.'

She flung more intimate, passionate phrases at him before the call ended, and he loved her for it. But he feared as he sat in his empty, luxurious flat that passion might lead to indiscretion, that some slip would bring the police into his life as well as to hers, with much more dangerous consequences.

Martin Price didn't even consider that he and not Greta might be the source of revelations.

Clyde Northcott's motorcycle gear was an effective disguise. No one could say what his occupation was once he had leathers and helmet on.

He roared ten miles through countryside to the house he had to visit in Chorley. He enjoyed riding at night, when all you could see was the long beam of your headlight ahead and the dipped headlights of vehicles coming the other way. It concentrated your attention on this narrow corridor of action and excluded the rest of the world. He always thought of himself at night as a racehorse with blinkers, blind to all the world save for this brilliantly lit tunnel where the action took place.

He went much more slowly when he reached the small town, easing the big Yamaha quietly through the narrowing streets until he reached the place he wanted. He eased himself from the bike and stood quite still for a moment in the shadow of the brick wall, waiting for the adrenalin and excitement he always got from a ride to seep through his veins. He had never taken his blood pressure; he imagined it would be high for a while after the bike. He could feel the pulse in his head slowing, even in the minute or so he allowed himself to remove his helmet and gauntlets.

He was an impressive figure in his close-fitting black leathers, which seemed to increase his already huge height. But there was no way anyone could identify him as a policeman. He was merely a formidable biker who rode a formidable machine.

He moved a few yards to the back of a row of council houses. They were not part of a large and noisy estate, but a mere two streets of older buildings from the fifties. No doubt most of them had by now been purchased by sitting tenants and become private residences. There was no sign of life or movement at the rear.

Human movement, that is. The dark shape of a cat flashed across his vision as he stealthily opened the gate at the end of the garden. The darkness and the suddenness of its flight made the movement seem unnaturally swift, so that he was left with the impression of lightning movement, rather than any image of the animal itself. His first reaction was shock. His second one was relief that it wasn't a rat. Clyde didn't like rats, and where there was one rat there were usually others. Cats were infinitely preferable.

As if to reinforce that view, a dog barked, three times in rapid succession. Not a large dog, Clyde judged, and at least four houses away. Nothing to worry about, especially when you had your leathers as additional protection. He moved cautiously up the concrete path which his adjusted vision could now clearly distinguish. When he felt his way to the handle of the back door, he found it locked as he had expected.