Riddled on the Sands (The Lakeland Murders) (33 page)

‘I’ve read Conan Doyle.’

‘That might not help all that much, I’m afraid. Instead try to imagine you’re a modern Police Officer, with very limited time and resources available. As a result all kinds of minor, and some really quite significant crime goes unpunished, even when detected. Now imagine that in the case of John Perkins you knew who had sent the letters, and who had started the fire, but were unable to prove it. What would you do?’

‘Would I have sufficient resources to continue with the investigation?’

‘Not in a pro-active fashion, no. The file would remain open, but in the absence of any new information then no charges could be brought.’

Robinson thought about it.

‘This is a two pipe problem. And I’m quite sure of my suspect’s guilt, am I?’

‘Oh yes, you’re absolutely sure.’

‘And do I empathise with him in any way?’

‘You do, but that doesn’t cloud your judgement for one second. What he did was a very serious matter. What if a firefighter had been killed trying to fight the fire for, example? What if it had spread to neighbouring houses, and a child had died in its cot? No, you would charge this man without a second’s hesitation, if you could.’

‘And am I concerned about the risk of him offending again?’

Hall smiled. ‘Yes, absolutely you are. That’s your prime concern in all this. All the rest is ashes and memories.’

Robinson was silent. The rain rattled on the windows, and Hall could hear it gurgling down a drainpipe somewhere nearby, too.

‘I have decided what I’d do’ said Robinson eventually. ‘I would meet the suspect, informally, in order to attempt to divine his future intentions. I would sit with him, perhaps in a room very much like this one, and I would tell him that he would be under the closest scrutiny in future, and this if anything untoward occurred to Mr. Perkins then he would be my prime suspect, as I believe you say.’

Hall nodded, then finished his tea.

‘That sounds like a most pragmatic approach to the problem, under the circumstances. And do you think that your suspect would heed the warning?’

‘I do. I believe that he would, absolutely.’

‘Good. Then I think we should leave you in peace. But before I go, I wanted to give you this.’ Hall reached into his battered old briefcase, and produced a paperback book. ‘It’s not remotely similar to what you lost, but I thought you might enjoy it.’

Jane knew that Hall had been reading the book the previous night.

‘Eliot’s Complete Poems. Thank you, Inspector. But I see there’s a rather lovely dedication to you on the flyleaf. I couldn’t possibly accept it.’

‘No, I’d like you to have it, very much in fact. Sometimes we all have to move on, don’t we?’

The old man nodded. ‘That’s easier said than done, though, isn’t it, Inspector?’

Hall didn’t reply. He got up, and Jane followed suit. She didn’t speak until they were almost back in Kendal.

‘I’m glad you gave him the book, but won’t you miss it?’

‘I can easily buy another. Or perhaps I should put it on my Christmas list?’

‘Getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren’t you?’

‘Perhaps I am.’ Hall’s tone was as non-committal as ever.

‘I’m only joking. Of course I’ll get it for you for Christmas. I’d love to do that.’

‘Do you know what Eliot called
The Waste Land
, originally I mean?’

‘No. Something even more depressing, I expect.’

‘
He do the Police in Different Voices
. That’s what it was called. It’s a quote from Dickens. I looked it up.’

‘Really? I like that.’

Hall smiled. ‘Yes, I do too. It’s great, isn’t it?’

Ian Mann had his evening meal with Jimmy Rae and his lads. No-one said much, and Mann wasn’t surprised. The plans were all agreed, so there wasn’t much to say. The jokes and banter had dried up too. No-one wanted to the last words they said to a mate to be a piss-take.

The Police firearms unit had arrived, and after they’d eaten as well Jimmy and the lads who’d be out on the Bay that night came to the farm to meet up with them. It was just before half seven, and they all stood together in an old cowshed. Jimmy was very keen to make sure that the firearms lads knew what they needed to do if any shooting started, and the Inspector in command didn’t look too happy at being told what to do.

‘And if they don’t start shooting?’ he asked.

‘Then it’s happy days. Your lads just make the arrests in the usual way, and as soon as your suspects are disarmed and the drugs have been secured then me and my lads will be on our way.’

‘And what about the vessel that the gang land from? What if it gets away?’

‘Don’t worry about that. It will be taken care of.’

Mann’s phone rang, and he was just about to send it to voice mail when he saw who it was from. ‘Andy’ he said. ‘Are you on your way? I’m heading out onto the Bay with Jimmy’s boys in a bit.’

‘You be careful. No heroics now, Ian. Leave that to the soldier boys. And yes, I’m on my way, but I’ve just had a call from Geoff Atkinson. He wants to see me. It sounded urgent, but he wouldn’t say why. Have you seen him about at all?’

‘No. But I’ve not been monitoring the CCTV today. You want me to check?’

‘Yes please.’

Mann walked across the farmyard in the rain, and climbed into the truck.

‘No, mate’ he said, ‘he’s not been out and about much the last couple of days. He was in Capstick’s yard for a bit today, he was there for an hour apparently, but that’s it.’

‘Could you see what he was doing in Capstick’s yard?’

‘No, Andy, the cameras can’t see round corners, mate.’

‘OK. I’ll find out what he wants. He’s probably feeling a bit unloved, that’s all. I’ll let you know if anything happens.’

‘I’ll be turning my phone off before we go out there, Andy, but I doubt it’ll be anything important, do you?’

‘No. But you’re happy for me to be seen in the village, I take it. No need for any creeping about?’

‘Of course not. I don’t think you’d be much good at creeping anyway, mate.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment, I think. And listen, good luck, and don’t take any risks. You’re just out there to observe and make the arrests. If they’re carrying the same weapons as last time then we’ve got a decent chance of conspiracy to murder here, and that’s the very least that Jack Bell deserves.’

When Hall parked in the village the street was quiet, but the rain was falling heavily again, and he could hear peals of thunder in the far distance. Geoff Atkinson’s door opened before Hall could knock.

‘Drink?’ he said, when they were inside, holding up his whisky tumbler.

‘No, I’m fine thanks.’

‘On duty?’

‘Yes, and I’m driving.’

‘Things must be quiet, if you’re willing to drive all the way out here for no reason.’

‘There is a reason. It sounded urgent, and you’re a former colleague. Plus, you helped us no end with the Bell case.’

‘Not so as you’d notice. Until today I hadn’t seen a copper round here for days.’

‘Until today?’

‘Aye. Then I saw one of the unmarked Volvos down at the shop, one of the firearms unit ones.’

‘Really? I wonder what they were up to.’

Atkinson looked at him closely.

‘You’re on to them, aren’t you? You know the gear is coming in tonight, don’t you?’

‘Geoff, look, I’m sorry, but I haven’t got a bloody clue what you’re talking about. Maybe it was the gun-squad’s staff night out, maybe they were going to a live firing exercise somewhere. Sorry, but I just don’t know where very one of Cumbria Constabulary’s vehicles are at any given time.’

‘I stabbed Pete Capstick.’

‘You what?’

‘You heard me. I stabbed Pete Capstick. And I’m due to be driving the tractor and trailer tonight.’

‘What time?’ Hall didn’t look surprised, but there was an urgency in his question.

‘I leave here at half ten.’

‘OK. I’ll make a call, but before I do, tell me one thing. Were you going to go through with it tonight? If you hadn’t spotted our car, I mean.’

‘Oh aye, of course I was.’

‘And you’re not planning to do anything daft now?’

‘Like what?’

‘Hang on a minute then.’ Hall made no attempt to prevent Atkinson from hearing what he was saying on the phone. ‘Jane, it’s Andy. Geoff Atkinson has just confessed to stabbing Pete Capstick, and to being the gang’s man on the ground. He was due to drive the tractor tonight. This is what I need you to do. First, phone Vic Osman, ask him to tell Jimmy Rae to come round here for the tractor at ten. He’s to leave at half past.’

Hall looked at Atkinson, who nodded.

‘Then I want you, Ray Dixon and the biggest PC you can find to get round here, quick as you like. But not SOCO. I just want Atkinson to be detained here until after the drugs arrests have been made. And can you call the Super for me too, and let her know?’

Hall listened for a moment.

‘No, I don’t know why. I’m just about to ask him that.’

‘I might as well have that drink’ said Hall, when he’d rung off.

‘Are you surprised? You don’t look it.’

‘Don’t I? Of course I am, Geoff. I’d be lying if I said I’d totally eliminated you, but I couldn’t see why, or how, you’d be involved.’

‘What do you want to know first?’

‘How you ever came to be involved in this shit.’

‘I used to take a few quid off a couple of lads from west Cumbria, when I was in the job, like.’

‘Why?’

‘Just to make sure that they had no trouble landing ciggies, a bit of booze, like. I did it for years, on and off.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Come on, Andy. We both know better than that.’

‘OK, go on.’

‘I just used to make sure our lads weren’t around, and check that Customs and the Coastguard hadn’t got wind of what was happening. Make sure that there weren’t going to be any unpleasant surprises, like.’

‘How did you do that? Were you paying someone off?’

‘No, I didn’t need to. Young Simon Healey is so bloody keen, you could barely stop him talking about it. He was forever asking me if I’d seen anything suspicious, and I soon twigged that he was seeing emails from his bosses, whenever they had operations on. He just printed them out and handed them over. But he’s totally clean, Andy, I swear.’

Hall nodded. So Jimmy Rae wasn’t quite as bad a detective as Hall had thought.

‘And then?’

‘About three months ago, soon after I’d left the job, I had a visit. Don’t know who he was. Told me that he’d got my name from the Cumbrian lads, and that I’d just started playing in the big league. He gave me five grand in cash, and told me that there’d be another twenty five when the gear was ashore.’

‘Did he tell you what it was?’

‘No, and I didn’t ask. There was no need, was there?’

‘So why didn’t you tell him to get stuffed?’

‘I did. Of course I bloody did. He just said that I’d be grassed up quicker than you could say ‘bye-bye pension’, and I was sure he meant it. He told me that they needed someone to drive a tractor and trailer out onto the sands, they’d not done that before, and that I was to do it. I said I couldn’t, that it would be too dangerous, so he told me to get someone else found, and quick.’

‘And you chose Pete?’

‘Aye, it was easy. I fed him some bullshit about it being a bit of fun, smuggling like, and he bought it. I told him there was a bit of cash in it, and that was it. He didn’t seem to realise what it would be like. What the people would be like. He didn’t even know it was gear, the prat.’

‘And you didn’t feel the need to tell him?’

‘No, God help me, I didn’t. He was happy as Larry to be going out there the night that Jack got shot, he’d been talking about it for days. I could hardly shut him up about it. It all seemed like a game to him, like.’

‘And then Jack got shot.’

‘Aye. He told me that they’d just started loading the trailer when they heard Jack’s tractor, and he got quite close before they even saw him. Pete’s engine was running see, and the outboards on the boat were too. One of the lads on the boat jumped off, and shot Jack before he’d got five yards away from his tractor. Pete said that someone else opened up as well. They didn’t shout a warning, nothing, just shot Jack down. Jack called out to Pete first, but then the shooting started.’

‘Then what? They took Jack’s body?

‘Oh aye, they chucked it in the boat. They’ll have weighed it down somehow, when they were out in the deep channel, and chucked him over the side.’

‘Did someone tell you this?’

‘I was told he was dead.’

‘And this was another house call, was it?’