Murder of a Dead Man (6 page)

‘Do you really expect people to fall for this

“poor lost soul” crap?’

‘Pardon?’ Nigel turned his pony-tailed head and looked at Peter through weak blue eyes rimmed by gold wire spectacles.

‘You want the world to feel sorry for a junkie who’s an hour off a downer when he’d be prepared to do anything or anyone to fund the next trip?’

‘He told us it was drink.’

‘And I’m Santa Claus.’

‘That might explain…’

‘What?’ Bill paused the disc again.

‘What comes next? Father Mayberry and Constable Murphy described the man you were interested in and I put all the footage I could find of him on this disc.’

‘If there’s more to come let’s watch it,’ Bill hit the play button.

‘We were in Jubilee Street for two weeks…’

‘Quiet!’ Bill ordered, and all eyes focused on the screen again.

Another interview, this time with Captain Arkwright who eloquently pleaded for more understanding and financial support from the community. A longer one with Tom Morris who reiterated the message of the Salvation Army worker directly to the camera, but more forcibly. Even Peter was tempted to put his hand in his pocket.

‘He’s very attractive,’ Anna commented.

‘He’s married,’ Trevor warned.

‘With looks like that, who cares?’ Anna glanced slyly at Peter.

‘Doesn’t he simply exude sincerity? He was a treasure. An absolute gift to a documentary maker,’

Nigel enthused. ‘Blond hair and blue eyes are often photogenic, like yours, Anna…’

‘You two know one another?’ Peter interrupted.

‘We did,’ Nigel winked at Anna.

‘Years ago,’ Anna said in a tone that warned off both Nigel and Peter.

‘But Tom has more than just his looks,’ Nigel continued. ‘He’s wasted where he is. I told him to go for a career in advertising or presenting. His looks and sincerity could take him to the top.’

‘Possibly he appears sincere because he believes in what he’s doing,’ Peter suggested.

Cut to a queue forming outside the hostel. It was still light – mid-afternoon? A pan along the queue. Tony huddled into his black overcoat and bright red baseball boots stood between two men.

One, who could have been any age between thirty and fifty, had dirty blond hair, a round face and cheerful, empty smile. The other was as tall and dark as Tony, but, unlike Tony, his eyes were heavy and dull in his lean face. Trevor wondered if it was lack of interest or – drug damage.

‘Know them, Sam?’ Bill asked the priest.

‘The dark one is Vince. We’ve learned to tread carefully with our guests, and that one in particular is very withdrawn.’

‘He still around?’ Dan reached into his pocket for his peppermints.

‘I didn’t see either of them last night, but that doesn’t mean anything. They’re regular casuals, if you know what I mean. They sleep with us when they can afford it and on the streets when they can’t.

We sometimes go for days without seeing them.’

‘They a pair?’ Peter leaned forward on his elbows.

‘They’re usually together. The dark one is – not quite himself.’

‘Mental case?’ Peter diagnosed.

‘I believe they’ve both been discharged from Compton Castle.’

Trevor remained silent. He’d had first hand experience of Compton Castle, and some of his colleagues’ attitudes to his brief incarceration in a psychiatric ward had been anything but supportive or understanding. It was the hush that descended when he walked into some of the station’s offices that hurt the most.

The camera continued to roll along the queue, the same syrupy female voice droned in the background. A grey, foam-topped microphone came into focus in the centre of the screen. Out of shot, Nigel addressed Tony and the two men standing next to him.

‘There are only beds for twenty-seven men in this hostel. Do you realise you’re the fiftieth in line?’

‘Of course he bloody realises!’ Tony, no longer shambling and incoherent, but aggressive, high on something that had pumped him full of adrenaline, stepped close to the camera. ‘What the fuck are you doing here? Haven’t you the decency to leave us alone? Some of us have families. People who don’t know how low we’ve sunk.’ The camera swung alarmingly. A shot of ground speckled with spittle and dog mess was followed by a fuzzy blackout, then sky; beautifully clear blue sky adorned by white fluffy clouds that ended sharply in black nothingness.

‘He smashed the camera,’ Nigel said.

‘Serves you right for playing with junkies,’

Peter interjected.

‘We were trying to make an honest social statement.’

‘About what?’ Peter demanded. ‘The depths those forced to live on our streets have sunk to?

Let’s visit the dossers, they’re more amusing than monkeys and have the added spice of being more dangerous. And, watching this programme will make you feel superior to the common herd for an hour or two.’

‘Curb it, Peter!’ Bill warned.

‘There’s nothing worse than a bloody armchair do-gooder. Try doing it his way,’ Peter pointed to Sam, ‘then you might accomplish something.’

‘We’re raising consciousness –’

‘By turning your audience into voyeurs? You and your kind make me sick.’ Ignoring the “No Smoking” sign on the wall, Peter filched a cigar from the top pocket of his shirt, and rammed it between his lips.

Bill waited until he was sure that Peter had finished his outburst before taking his finger off the pause button. Shots of the interior of a hostel came into view, dark with shadows and poor lighting.

Scenes of men undressing in a dismal corridor that led to a communal shower room were interspersed with frames of broken vinyl tiles badly laid on an uneven concrete floor. They were followed by lingering close-ups of black mould growing between cracked white wall tiles. Then the filthy showers themselves, the plug holes blocked by dirt.

‘I didn’t give you permission to film inside,’

Sam protested. ‘I explained that with so many men going through it’s impossible to clean the showers while they’re in use.’

‘I should imagine it’s impossible to keep a shower room of that age clean, full stop.’ Anna said sympathetically. After the grubby clutter of her living room, Peter wondered how her bathroom would fare in close-up.

Lines of half-naked men wearing cheap striped towels around their waists queued to hand over their clothes to volunteers. The camera followed the bundles as they were pushed through the enamel doors of large machines.

‘Since when have you started washing their clothes, Sam?’ Trevor asked.

‘I only wish we could. There isn’t time. Our customers generally only have what they’re standing up in. We’re always on the look-out for donations, but men’s clothing never comes into the charity shops in sufficient quantities for us to kit our clients out. Plenty of women’s and children’s, but never men’s.’

‘What are those if not washing machines?’ Dan asked.

‘Tumbler dryers. The heat kills the lice.’

‘Fried lice?’

‘Sergeant Collins!’ Bill glared at Peter’s unapologetic face.

‘Just adding some levity to the proceedings.’

The unlit cigar still dangled between Peter’s lips. He knew better than to antagonise Bill more than he already had by lighting it.

They continued to watch the screen. The picture panned out on the dilapidated buildings of Jubilee Street, marooned like abandoned ships in a sea of debris. Pan in on the new Marina, clean, white, gleaming concrete walkways, three and six storey red-brick buildings sporting shining UVPC

windows. Neatly dressed, law-abiding citizens, sitting outside pavement cafés, glasses of wine and lager, and seafood salads in front of them. People walking, chatting and generally not doing very much of anything. Girls wearing bright summer Tshirts and jeans, women in mini-skirts and straw hats, men showing off pale, hairy arms in short-sleeved shirts. Children licking ice cream cornets as they gazed in arcade windows. Music, a fade to credits –‘That it?’ Bill fast forwarded the credits to the end.

‘That’s the rough. It has to be cut to half that length. I left some stuff on the cutting-room floor but nothing of any of the vagrants.’

‘Nothing?’ Peter looked sceptical.

‘Interviews with Father Mayberry, Captain Arkwright, Tom Morris and their staff,’ Andrew broke in. ‘I saw them.’

‘I brought along the out-takes in case you wanted them.’ Nigel held up a second disc.

‘We can keep both?’ Bill asked purely as a courtesy.

‘Permanently. They’re copies.’

‘Did you talk to Tony away from the cameras?’

Trevor questioned.

‘Only a few words. The film was my idea. I produced and directed it as well as doing some interviewing. But Tony didn’t say much more than you saw.’

‘What about the rest of the people who worked with you?’

‘The rest of us?’ Nigel laughed deprecatingly.

‘You mean the camera man, and Joanne who doubles as researcher and second interviewer.’

‘That’s it?’

‘The whole team. It’s average for a television station our size.’

‘You sure there’s nothing else you can tell us about Tony?’ Dan persisted.

‘Nothing,’ Nigel asserted. ‘We started filming that first interview the minute we saw him.’

‘When you woke him, you mean.’

‘How did –’ Nigel looked from Peter to Bill.

‘When he spotted the camera before that second interview he went berserk, as you saw.’

‘Did you see him again?’

‘Once or twice, but we went out of our way to avoid him.’

‘So you didn’t talk to him again?’

‘You kidding? The next time I saw him with the other two in an alley I ran.’

‘Did you give him anything after the first interview?’ Peter asked.

‘Like what?’

‘Money. A fix. Booze?’

‘We may have given him a couple of quid.’

‘May have?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Sure the quids didn’t come wrapped in little plastic packets?’

‘I’m not a drug dealer, Sergeant Collins,’ Nigel protested.

‘How did you know I was talking about drugs?’

‘It’s obvious – it’s –’

‘You gave him money. Nothing else?’ Trevor recalled the bottle. ‘No whisky?’

When Nigel didn’t reply, Sam turned on him.

‘Mr Valance! You promised, no drink,’ Sam reproached.

‘Constable Murphy will take your statement, Mr Valance,’ Bill wound up the proceedings.

‘Thank you for your time.’

‘If there’s anything else I can do, Superintendent.’ Nigel was reluctant to leave. He had an idea for a documentary on the local police force and was tempted to bring up the subject. He glanced at the faces around the table wondering if it was a good time.

‘We’ll call you if we need you again, Mr Valance,’ Bill replied. ‘As I’ll assume you’ll do if you remember anything else. No matter how trivial or insignificant. In a case like this we need every crumb of information we can get.’

‘Of course, Superintendent.’ Nigel walked out through the door that Andrew was holding open.

‘Well?’ Bill looked expectantly around the table.

‘Row between two dossers over a bottle?’ Anna suggested.

‘That might explain the knife injuries to the face, but not the petrol. That sounds premeditated to me.’ Peter pulled the cigar out of his mouth.

‘I agree,’ Trevor concurred. ‘Vagrants don’t carry petrol. My money’s on kids looking for sick kicks.’

‘Anyone ever taken to trying to drink it?’

‘Meths, but never petrol, to my knowledge,’

Sam Mayberry said.

‘If they’re gone enough they might siphon some out of a car,’ Anna suggested.

‘Most of the old hands carry knives,’ Peter pushed his chair back and propped his feet on the table. ‘I wish I had a fiver for every one Trevor and I have taken off them.’

‘You ever see Tony with one, Sam?’ Trevor asked.

Sam shook his head. ‘They know the rules. If they’re seen with a weapon inside the hostel they’re disarmed and shown the door. Permanently.’

‘Supposing it’s as Anna said,’ Dan reflected.

‘Tony had a bottle, another dosser wanted it. One of them pulled a knife, they fought –’

‘And the other dosser happened to be carrying a can of petrol?’ Trevor said.

‘Perhaps the knifing came first, the petrol later.

Supposing Tony was killed in a brawl and the other man panicked when he realised Tony was dead.

Then he got the petrol and used it to cover his tracks.’

‘Tony was still screaming when Sam ran out of the hostel,’ Trevor reminded him.

‘Some of our customers can be violent when provoked, especially in drink,’ Sam contributed,

‘but I can’t see many of them having the presence of mind to try to conceal what they’d done.’

‘Finding out what happened is our problem, Sam, and this is all pure conjecture.’ Bill rose to his feet. ‘Anything you can add to what’s already been said –’

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Sam promised.

‘Don’t forget to call us if we can be of any help either.’

‘Thank you, it’s good to know we can count on the force.’

‘The two men with Tony in that queue?’ Trevor asked as the priest went to the door. ‘Was Tony with them often?’

‘First time I’d seen him with them. Whenever he stayed in the hostel, he’d shower, have his clothes treated, eat his meal, throw himself on a bed, and sleep.’

‘Was he a regular?’

‘On and off. Couple of times a week for about a year, year and a half according to the book. I looked it up before I left.’

‘Thank you for taking the trouble.’

‘That reminds me,’ Sam produced a folded piece of paper from his trouser pocket. ‘I made a list of the dates he stayed with us. Thought you might find it useful.’

‘That’s saved someone a bit of leg work.’ Dan unfolded the paper and laid it on the table.

‘According to this he slept in your place two or three times a week for eighteen months, more often in winter than summer. Any idea where he went the other nights?’ Dan passed the sheet to Peter.

‘The same place those who can’t run to our seventy-five pence fee, and the overflow we fail to accommodate, go to every night of the week.

Cardboard boxes and blankets on the beach, a shake-down in the underpasses or the multi-storeys.