Murder of a Dead Man (12 page)

‘Peter and Anna come up with anything?’

‘Not even themselves.’

Trevor raised an eyebrow.

‘I can’t see Anna succumbing to Peter’s charms,’ Dan said.

‘Oh, I don’t know, he has his moments.’

‘If he’s having them on my squad’s time, I’ll make sure he won’t see his bed again until this villain’s caught.’

‘Want me to start down Jubilee Street now?’

Trevor held up the fax. ‘I can photocopy it; show it to Sam, Tom Morris and the Salvation Army captain.’

‘There’s nothing else that needs doing urgently.

I’ll be here if you need me.’

‘You think we’ve reached a dead end?’

‘Unless you can see a turning point I can’t, yes.’

It was a dank, damp morning, and after the sun and brief promise of spring the day before, Trevor found the drive to the dock area depressing. Grey street followed grey street, the endless rows of terraces shining damply in the rain, each looking more decaying and derelict the closer he drew to Jubilee Street.

The surroundings matched his mood. He felt that Lyn’s move to distance herself just when Daisy had reappeared in his life was ominous. He wished he’d forced Lyn to listen to him. Told her about Daisy, talked to her about the case, tried to involve her. How had he handled similar situations with Mags? Looking back, he realised he hadn’t. She, like Lyn, had absented herself, mentally and physically, with increasing frequency, until the day Peter had taken him aside and told him what Mags should have told him months before. That she was having an affair with another man.

He drew up outside Sam’s hostel, picked up the photocopies of the fax from the passenger seat, stuffed them into the inside pocket of his anorak, and walked up to the battle-scarred front door.

‘We’re closed,’ a voice proclaimed from inside before he reached the doorstep.

‘Sergeant Trevor Joseph to see Sam Mayberry,’

he called back.

He heard the sounds of feet shuffling down a passage being overtaken by swifter, surer steps.

Bolts grated back on the inside of the door.

‘Trevor, it’s always good to see you.’ Sam swung the door wide. ‘Come in, come in,’ he repeated as though he were the genial host of a pub.

‘Into my office. One of the boys has just lit a fire there for me. Would you like some tea?’

‘Tea would be good, thank you, Sam.’ Trevor settled in one of the hand-me-down chairs that had been repaired with slabs of foam by a job creation scheme.

‘Have you any news on the poor soul who died?’ Sam asked as he sat opposite him.

‘We’re working on it, Sam.’ Trevor thrust his hand into his pocket. ‘I know this picture’s blurred, but have you ever seen this man around the hostels?’

Sam picked up a pair of rimless spectacles from his desk, perched them on the end of his nose and squinted through the lenses. ‘I’ve seen him queuing outside Tom Morris’s hostel and if anyone knows anything about the man it will be Tom. Tom spends hours talking to his customers. He gave up a high-ranking post in Social Services and took two years secondment on a lower salary to come down here.’

‘He’s an idealist.’

‘He’s a man who saw a need and tried to fulfil it.’

‘How long has he been here?’ Trevor asked, as a young priest carried in two cups of tea.

‘Since Christmas. He visited Jubilee Street as one of a Social Services’ working party who were looking at the council run hostel with a view to closing it. Ben Proctor who’d been running it had just retired. The official line in County Hall was that they could do without the place. Fortunately it wasn’t Tom Morris’s. He took one look at the queues for beds and asked for a transfer. The reason his place looks better than ours, inside that is, is Tom knows how to pressurise the local charity groups. He has friends who sit on the committees of voluntary bodies. In the four months since he’s been here, he’s managed to find the money to redecorate the place top to bottom, put in new showers, and new mattresses. Pity the television people didn’t see fit to film the inside of his hostel instead of mine.’

‘Wouldn’t have had the same shock value,’

Trevor observed.

‘You’re right. Tom does a good job. It’s odd, but we all specialised, and not intentionally. Captain Arkwright caters for the ladies and young girls, God help them, they seem so much more vulnerable than the men. I get the drunks and the hopeless cases.

Tom set out to make his place a halfway house for those who still have the drive to get back on their feet. And he’s succeeded. Since January he’s got six young men on to training schemes and into bed-sits in the town.’ Sam knocked the ashes from his pipe against the grate. ‘That may not sound many to you, but for each man it’s a triumph over odds that seemed impossibly stacked against them before Tom arrived.’

‘I can imagine.’ Trevor looked out of the window at two shambling figures who were wheeling a supermarket trolley towards the underpass that led into the town centre.

Sam finished his tea. ‘Shall we go across the street and up a social level?’

Tom Morris’s hostel smelled of fresh paint. The ceilings, walls and woodwork were covered in white emulsion and gloss. Inexpertly applied, thick white streaks and splashes had fallen on to the cracked quarry floor tiles; and the lines between gloss and emulsion wavered in places, shining walls and dulling doors.

Tom came down the stairs to greet them, casually dressed in a white cotton Arran sweater and brown trousers. He extended his hand, and Trevor shook it. He saw Trevor looking round.

‘This place has been decorated with more enthusiasm than expertise, Sergeant. The local Rotary club supplied the materials and some of our younger inmates did the work.’

‘I’ve been asking Tom when he’s going to start on my place,’ Sam chipped in.

‘As soon as this place is straight.’ Tom led the way up the stairs and past a room that had been turned into a make-shift café. ‘Beginnings of a day centre,’ he explained. ‘It’s no use giving a man somewhere to sleep, only to turf him out into the cold all day long. It’s no wonder so many turn to drink and drugs.’

‘A day centre would be good,’ Trevor agreed.

‘We also try to persuade our regulars to improve their prospects by attending the free literacy and numeracy classes in the Y.M.C.A. Two even embarked on a computer course last week.’

‘See what I mean about dedication?’ Sam said as Tom led them into a cold, cluttered office.

Tom sat behind his desk and motioned them into the only other chairs in the room.

‘Sam thought you might know this man?’

Trevor handed the photocopy to Tom.

‘I know the face. But he’s not one of our regulars. I threw him out four –’ Tom picked up a ledger from his desk and flicked through the pages

‘– five nights ago for hitting one of the lads. He slammed him against the wall. It’s a wonder the boy wasn’t seriously hurt. He was drunk as a lord at the time.’

‘Can you remember his name?’

‘The boys call him the General, but I couldn’t tell you why, he signed in here as Philip Smith.’

‘Did you know he was ex-army?’ Trevor asked.

‘No. You looking for him in connection with the burned body?’

‘Just want to question him.’ Trevor returned the photocopy to his pocket.

‘Do you think he killed the poor man, Trevor?’

Sam asked.

‘We don’t know, Sam.’

‘Should we warn our customers that he’s dangerous?’ Tom asked.

‘You said you’d thrown him out.’

‘I’ve banned him from the hostel, but they could bump into him on the streets.’

‘Just ask around, if you would,’ Trevor shivered and zipped up his coat. ‘Get word back to us if anyone sees him.’

‘I will, but shouldn’t I also warn them to stay away?’

‘Might be just as well.’ Trevor rose to his feet.

‘Can I offer you something before you go?

Coffee, tea?’

‘Nothing, thank you. I must be going,’ Trevor refused politely.

‘I’ll have a cup of tea if I may, Tom.’ Sam smiled. ‘And a chat about free paint.’

Trevor left the hostel and walked across the street. A group of four young men and a girl were standing around his parked car looking in through the windows.

‘You’re a pig, aren’t you?’ The question came from a boy Trevor gauged to be about sixteen or seventeen. His head was shaved and covered in amateur tattoos. A swastika radiated from the crown of his skull, a dagger ornamented one cheek, a rampant dragon the other.

Trevor’s first instinct was to climb into his car and drive away. But with so few leads to follow, anything had to be worth a try.

‘Yes, and I’m investigating a murder that took place here three nights ago.’

‘Why?’ the girl was no older than the boy, but grubbier. Her grey mini-skirt was streaked with dirt, her blue anorak torn and grimy. Her bare legs were bruised and coated with layers of mud, her shoes broken and down at heel, and her hair, blonde, thin and greasy, tied back with a piece of string.

‘Because it’s my job,’ Trevor replied evenly.

‘No one gives a damn what happens down here,’ she asserted.

‘I do, and the people who run the hostels do.’

Trevor pulled out the fax photograph and the folder he kept the “Tony” photographs in. ‘Have you seen either of these men around?’

‘Naw.’ The boy with the shaved head turned his back and pulled a pack of cigarette papers out of his pocket.

‘You,’ Trevor pointed his finger at the girl, ‘just said no one gives a damn what happens down here.

Have you thought it’s because people like you won’t allow anyone near enough to care?’

‘What’s it to you what happens to us?’

‘I’m looking for a killer who’s struck once in this street. If he isn’t caught one of you could be next.’

‘Just let anyone try anything with me, or any of my mates.’ A boy with purple hair produced a hunting knife. He removed it from its leather sheath and ran his fingers down the edge of the six-inch blade. Trevor tried to recall exactly what Patrick had said about the murder weapon. Had his first guess of kids out for sick kicks been right?

‘What you looking at?’ the boy demanded truculently of Trevor.

‘From what I saw laid out on the mortuary slab two days ago, you’re going to need a lot more than that,’ Trevor nodded at the knife, ‘if you come up against the villain who burnt the poor bastard to death behind that hoarding. A petrol-soaked, charred corpse is not a pretty sight. There wasn’t enough left to give us age, eye-colour, or build. I’ve seen more meat on a barbecue,’ he added, deliberately trying to provoke them.

‘What should we do if we run into him?’ the girl demanded.

‘Scream for help. But it might not come to that if we pick him up. Look at these photographs.’

Trevor risked handing them to her. ‘Have you seen either of them?’

The girl took them, stared at them and shook her head.

The boy with the bald head and swastika snatched them from her. ‘You expect us to recognise someone from this?’ He tossed the fax back to Trevor in disgust.

‘Try the other one. It’s a clearer print.’

The girl opened the folder. ‘I know him,’ she pointed to the photograph of Tony.

‘Yeah, we know him,’ the boy with the tattoos agreed. ‘He the killer then?’

‘We think he’s the victim.’

‘The one that got burned to death?’ The boy glanced at the waste ground. It was cleaner than it had been in years after the police search.

‘Yes.’ Trevor folded the fax photograph back into his pocket.

‘He’s not dead.’ The girl held up the photograph so the boy with the purple hair could look at it. ‘We saw him last night.’

‘Where?’ Trevor demanded.

The girl and boy exchanged glances.

‘In the underpass,’ the boy said quickly, too quickly.

Trevor sensed he was lying. ‘What time?’

‘Late, I suppose.’

‘Was he sleeping?’

‘Naw. Just walking through,’ the lad with the purple hair asserted.

‘That’s it, he walked through before –’

‘Before what?’ Trevor asked when the girl fell silent.

She clammed her mouth shut, at a signal from the boy with the shaved head.

‘Please, this could be important. Where did he go?’

‘If we tell you, you’ll take us in. We know your kind.’

‘I swear, whatever you’ve done, if it’s short of murder I’ll turn a blind eye.’

‘You’re only saying that because you want something we’ve got. You pigs are all the same.

Once we’ve told you what you want to know, you’ll turn us in.’

‘Do you want me to put it in writing?’

‘Yeah, go on, give us a letter to say no copper can take us in.’

‘For what you’ve done up until now,’ Trevor qualified, patting his pockets in search of paper. He found a telephone bill he’d been meaning to pay all week. Pulling it out of the envelope, he filched a pen from his top pocket.

‘That’s not legal,’ the boy with the tattoos contended. ‘You’re bloody mugs –’

‘It could be one of you next.’ Trevor spoke directly to the girl, hazarding a guess that the boy with the tattoos had a soft spot for her.

‘What if the man we saw is the murderer?’ the girl appealed to the boys.

‘What if we lose our squat?’

‘Is that all this is?’ Trevor asked. ‘You’re trying to protect a squat. Don’t you know the law? It would take us weeks to get you out if the place was empty when you moved in, providing that is, you didn’t break in.’

‘See, told you,’ the girl crowed.

‘Wherever it is, I promise no one from the force will go near it until someone else reports it.’

‘It’s the old factory by the port buildings.’ The girl blasted a defiant look at the boys.

‘And you’re sure you saw this man in there?’

‘Last night.’

‘Would you show me exactly where?’

The girl looked around.

‘You’re on your own, Dell. We don’t talk to pigs.’ The boys moved off.

‘Jason?’ she pleaded with the boy with the tattoos. ‘You know I can’t get in there by myself.’

He looked from her to Trevor. ‘You sure this guy is a murderer?’

‘He could well be,’ Trevor replied ambiguously.

‘I never thought I’d help a pig. Come on then, if you’re coming.’