Some by Fire (23 page)

I rang Jeff Caton to tell him the good news, but his wife told me that he wasn’t home yet.

‘Not home!’ I exclaimed. ‘Not home! We’ve been home
hours
.’ She agreed to tell him to phone me as soon as he arrived.

When it’s on my patch I have the final say, so we met at ten on Sunday morning. Dave and myself went to see James Nelson while Nigel, Jeff and a DS from the drug squad met at the rhubarb sheds, armed with a search warrant.

Nelson lived in a run-down farmhouse just a few hundred yards from the row of terraced houses. More abandoned vehicles littered the yard and a German shepherd dog, chained to a wheel-less Ford Popular, gave an early warning of our approach. Judging from its teats it had just had pups. I moved to the other side of Sparky as we passed it.

‘Are you James Nelson?’ Dave asked the
leather-skinned
man who opened the door. He looked at least seventy, so we couldn’t be sure. He wore a vest and dangling braces, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in a documentary about Bosnian refugees.

‘Aye,’ he replied warily.

‘I’m DC Sparkington from Heckley CID, and this is my senior officer, DI Priest. I think you’d better let us in.’

My senior officer!
Dave was at his Sunday best and I was impressed.

The inside of the house was all Catherine Cookson. Not the wicked master’s house, and not that of the poor girl who is left orphaned and has to dig turnips every day with only a broken button-hook to raise a few coppers to feed her six younger brothers and sisters and keep them from the lascivious clutches of the master. This belonged to the stern but kindly blacksmith who throws her the odd horseshoe to make soup with, who is in love with her but knows that she is really the master’s illegitimate daughter and can never be his.

There was a big iron range, with a built-in
set-pot
and a fire glowing in the grate. Pans and strange implements hung from the beams and two squadrons of houseflies were engaged in a dogfight around the light bulb, which was on because the curtains were closed. The temperature must have been in the nineties. We sat down, and a black cat which I hadn’t seen bolted for safety from under my descending backside.

‘Are Barry and Len in?’ Dave asked.

Mr Nelson shook his head.

‘Where are they?’

‘They’m don’ live ‘ere. What they’m done now?’

‘Is there a Mrs Nelson?’

‘No. She passed away, twelve years sin’.’

‘I’m sorry. So where do Barry and Len live?’

‘Abroad. Tenerife.’

‘How long have they lived there?’

‘’Bout two year, why?’

‘Do they ever come home?’

‘Oh, aye, now an’ agin.’

‘When were they last home?’

‘Dunno.’

‘How about six weeks ago?’

‘Aye, about then, I suppose.’

‘And about a month before that?’

‘It could o’ been.’

‘What do they do for a living in Tenerife, Mr Nelson?’ I asked.

He switched his gaze to me and clenched his hands together, squeezing and relaxing his fingers, as if milking a cow. ‘They’m ’ave shares in a bar, or so they’m tells me. Dunno for sure.’

‘When are you expecting your sons home again?’ I said.

He shrugged his shoulders and glanced at his hands and back tome. ‘Dunno.’

‘Do they write or phone to tell you?’

‘No, they’m just turn up.’

‘Without warning?’

‘Aye.’

‘Do you look forward to their visits?’

He didn’t answer.

‘You had to raise them yourself,’ I stated.

‘I did me best.’

‘But they gave you a hard time?’

No answer. His fingers were long and swollen at the joints, and one nail was blackened and about to fall off. He wore a wedding ring, but it had been relegated to his pinky because of the swelling. And all the time he squeezed and relaxed his hands, as if the rhythm gave him some comfort.

‘Mr Nelson,’ I began. ‘Do you own the rhubarb sheds that back on to the M62?’

The kneading increased in fervour. ‘Aye,’ he replied, his head down.

‘What do you grow in them?’

‘Rhubub,’ he replied, looking up at me. ‘I grows rhubub. My boys, Barry and Len, they’m use the other ‘un. Don’ ask me what they’m grows in it.’

‘But you’ve a good idea, haven’t you?’

He lowered his head again. ‘Aye, I suppose so.’

‘What do you think it is?

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Pardon.’

‘Drugs, I reckon.’

‘So why haven’t you reported it to the police?’

He looked at me as if I’d asked him if he ever sniffed when his nose dribbled. ‘’Cos they’d do for me,’ he replied.

‘Are you scared of your sons?’ I asked.

He looked at his hands and didn’t answer.

‘Do they knock you about?’

He mumbled something I didn’t catch. ‘Could you say that again, please,’ I insisted.

‘They’ve given me a tap, now an’ again,’ he said.

I looked across at Dave. He said: ‘Put the rest of your clothes on, Mr Nelson. We have a warrant to search the sheds and we’d like you to come with us.’

If only to hold the flippin’ dog, I thought.

The other three were scattered around, looking for birds’ nests or that long-lost part of the vintage car. As we pulled up they emerged from the greenery and congregated around us. Jeff and the others had arrived home from the fishing trip after midnight, and his eyes resembled the proverbial piss-holes in the snow. In the car Mr Nelson had explained that he came every day, to feed the dog and fill the generator. There was an automatic irrigation system, so he never had to touch the plants.

The dog leapt about with joy when he unlocked the door, and after a great deal of fussing it settled down with what looked like a dustbin lid full of cows’ feet. I measured the length of its chain and added a yard for safety.

‘Oh my Gawd!’ exclaimed Jeff when he saw the Transit. He pointed at the aerial, the tax disc and the
mark on the windscreen. ‘Oh my Gawd!’ he repeated, then: ‘It’s it. This is it. You jammy so-and-sos.’

‘Good policing,’ I told him.’ Jammy’s nothing to do with it.’

‘I’ll ring for a SOCO,’ he said, producing a mobile phone.

The plants were in orderly rows, close together and about chest height. We spread out and walked between them, trailing our fingers through the fronds and all wondering what they were worth and if there was any harm in it. At the far end Dave hammered some new nails through the loose plank so the local youths couldn’t steal the evidence. Jeff rejoined us. ‘He’s on his way,’ he said.

I pulled two leaves from a plant, gave one to Jeff and popped the other in my mouth. ‘Make you feel better,’ I told him. Strolling back through the rows I plucked another. At the far end Jeff emerged from the adjacent row and poked his tongue out at me. On it was a chewed-up ball of what might have been spinach. I did the same to him and we both giggled like schoolgirls in an art gallery.

Dave and I took Mr Nelson back to the station. Some use the Nice Cop and Nasty Cop routine; others rely on the bastinado, beating them on the soles of their feet until they cooperate. We seduce them with a bacon sandwich and a mug of hot sweet tea. After that, he’d have told us anything.

He didn’t know when his sons were coming back, but agreed to tell us as soon as they did. If he had the opportunity. The burglaries had coincided with their visits and he had wondered if they had committed them. We assured him they had, and he shed a few tears.

When Jeff and Nigel returned we sat Mr Nelson in an interview room with another sarni, making a statement to a nice police lady, while we had an operations conference in my office. I wasn’t happy about asking him to grass on his sons. Blood, as they say, is thicker than prison soup.

‘The alternative,’ Jeff said, ‘is to put out an APW on them and hope someone tells us when they come into the country, or mount an observation operation.’

‘One’s unreliable and the other’s expensive,’ Nigel said.

‘We could just watch out for the van moving,’ Jeff suggested.

‘Still expensive,’ Nigel countered. ‘We could be waiting weeks. I think we should rely on Mr Nelson.’

‘We’re asking him to shop his sons,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t seem fair. Plus, he might not get the opportunity. Or he might change his mind; he’s obviously scared of them.’

‘Let’s ask the technical support boffins to fit the van with a bug,’ Dave suggested.

‘Sadly, it belongs to Len,’ I said. ‘If it’s not Mr Nelson’s van he can’t give us permission.’

‘We could say we didn’t know.’

‘It would be inadmissible,’ Nigel told him.

‘So what? We’ll still nab them.’

‘And it’ll get kicked out!’

‘
We
can’t fit a bug,’ I said, ‘but there is a way Mr Nelson could.’

They all looked at me.

‘He could just happen to drive the van into Electronic Solutions on Monday morning and ask them to fit it with a Tracker,’ I explained.

‘Who would pay?’ Nigel asked.

‘We would,’ I replied.

‘They cost about two hundred pounds.’

Dave turned on him. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Nigel,’ he began, ‘you’re growing into a right management cop.’

‘Nigel’s right,’ I said before an argument could develop. ‘Money’s tight, but I’ll make a case out for it. Jeff, how much would a surveillance operation cost?’

‘God knows!’ he gasped.

‘Think of a number.’

‘Er, ten thousand pounds.’

‘That’ll do. Two hundred for a Tracker is a bargain. Have a word with Electronic Solutions in the morning, see if they’ll do it cost price. Or, better still, free. Tell them we’ll take our fleet business away
from them if they won’t. Then ask Mr Nelson to take the van in.’

Electronic Solutions are auto electricians in Halifax. They tune our pursuit cars and fit various gizmos to them. The Tracker is a patented device that is more usually fitted to top-of-the-range vehicles like Porsches and Jags. It is secreted away somewhere and is completely passive until activated by a signal from a tracking station. If the car is reported stolen the signal is transmitted to it, and from then on its movements can be followed to within five yards. According to the literature some owners have had their vehicles found within minutes. Sadly, we’re not allowed to plant bugs in vehicles without the consent of the owner. It’s regarded as unsporting. Going to court with evidence gathered in such a manner would be misguided and overoptimistic, like ringing the Scottish Assembly and asking to reverse the charges. These days we’re not allowed to gain evidence by trickery, subterfuge or deviousness. Confessions are acceptable, most of the time, but not always, and video evidence is good. Courts love video evidence, because TV doesn’t lie. Get a decent tape of a crime in progress, show it on Look North, and the villains queue up to shout: ‘It’s me!’ They’re the same inadequate souls who appear on afternoon TV shows like Ricki Lake and Jerry Springer, confessing to owning a Barbour coat or having sexual relations with an armadillo. After
that, putting your hand up for blagging Barclays Bank is positively high class. No, we couldn’t fit the Transit with a bug, but Mr Nelson could.

‘It’s not continuous monitoring,’ Nigel warned. ‘They need alerting that the vehicle is on the move before they activate the bug. And they’ll want a crime reference number.’

‘Give them the last burglary number,’ Jeff suggested. ‘And once it’s activated it should run forever. It’s connected to the battery, I think.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s go for belt and braces. First of all, find out exactly how the Tracker works, Jeff. Then, if you think it necessary, put out an APW on the brothers. That might give us some notice that they are in the country. Lastly, if you’re still not convinced, ask Mr Nelson to give us a nod when they are around. OK?’

‘Yep.’

I sent Mr Nelson home with the WPC. His home, that is, not hers. As I walked to the door with them I said: ‘I believe you told us that your sons held shares in a bar in Tenerife, Mr Nelson.’

‘Aye, so they’m tell me.’

‘Any idea what it’s called?’

‘Aye, it’s called t’Pigeon Pie.’

‘Really?’ I said. You could have knocked me down with a Sally Lunn.

It was back to being a small-town DI for a week. We had an average quota of muggings, fights and burglaries, and Gilbert asked me to go to his Chamber of Commerce meeting to talk about security cameras. In other words, to tell them that if they wanted them they’d have to pay for them. Highlight of the week was when the owner of a Toyota pickup caught a wheelclamper in the act and made a commendable attempt to force the clamp where most of us can only fantasise about. The Toyota owner appeared before the beak and the clamper appeared before a surgeon for some stitches. The good news was that they did his piles at the same time.

We were hanging fire with the Fox job. A lot was resting on my meeting with him. I talked to Tregellis a couple of times and we discussed possibilities. Fox employed Kingston but might deny knowing him
personally. If they were buddies we’d concentrate on Kingston, suggesting that he might be involved with several crimes, including the fire, and encourage him to tell us what he knew about the man. If he said he didn’t know him personally we’d switch tack. I’d bring Crosby into the conversation and tell Fox that we were looking into his ancestry, which was true. Tregellis had asked the War Crimes Bureau, which had extensive German-Jewish connections, to try to find any surviving relatives of a certain Johannes Josef Fuchs who fled Germany in 1940, aged about twelve. I’d asked Crosby to call in at his convenience and donate six hairs from his head, so we could do a DNA comparison with any relatives they located back in the Fatherland. Maybe I’d ask Fox if he wanted to make a similar donation.

After that we’d talk to Kingston. We were flapping around in the dark, spreading shit and not knowing where it might land. We didn’t even know if they talked to each other. The fallback plan was to arrest Fox and ask him some searching questions. We’d get no answers and have to release him, but there’d be leaks of information and the papers would sit up and take notice. Every one of them would put a specialist team on the Fox story and they’d turn up more dirt than we could dream about.

Thursday morning Piers rang me from his home. They’d landed at Heathrow three hours earlier
and he’d just staggered in, jet-lagged and weary. I imagined him with a five o’clock shadow and his bow tie askew and wondered what they’d thought of him in Hillbilly Land.

‘Have you brought Melissa back with you?’ I asked.

‘No, but she said she’ll come,’ Piers replied. ‘Those photographs were crucial. At first she denied ever knowing Kingston, but with them we were able to convince her otherwise. When she realised that the crap was about to hit the fan in a big way, and we were willing to make a deal with her, she became more cooperative.’

‘What’s she offering?’

‘First of all let me tell you about where she lives. It’s a shanty town of trailers, not unlike some of those places you see from the train in north Wales, except it’s not raining all the time. She lives with an older man who is supposed to be some kind of revolutionary poet or something. They have ties with a ranch up in the hills, and spend a lot of time there. I think it’s probably where their redneck friends hang out. They’re into the gun culture in a big way, the place was bristling with them.’

‘Did you feel safe?’ I asked. It sounded dodgy to me.

‘Not really, Charlie,’ he replied. ‘Even though we had the deputy sheriff with us each time we visited
them. They have some mean-looking neighbours.’

‘How well off is she?’

‘Hard to say. Not very, at first glance, but they have plenty of possessions: the trailer, big Dodge pickup, huge television, freezer, air-conditioning, you name it. I’d say their main problem is cash flow. Melissa is having problems finding the money to have her teeth fixed.’

‘Her teeth?’

‘That’s right. This is the good bit. Their belief in self-sufficiency and disrespect for the establishment precludes having health insurance, it would appear, and Melissa is suffering from impacted wisdom teeth. They’re giving her a lot of trouble.’

‘Sounds painful. How does that help us?’

‘Like this. Melissa IDs Kingston for us and signs a statement saying that he told her to mark the number on the house in Leeds and show Duncan Roberts which it was. She thought he was just visiting there, or something. She swears she knew nothing of any plan to burn it down.’

‘She’s a lying little madam,’ I said.

‘That’s as may be,’ Piers replied. ‘Her story is that she was a nervous little student and Kingston was a charismatic lecturer. She was under his spell. Our side of the bargain is that we fly her to England with her boyfriend, house them for a week somewhere cheap but cheerful up near you, and arrange for her to have
her teeth fixed. What do you think?’

I thought for a few seconds before replying, then said: ‘I think you’ve done well, Piers. That’s about as much as you could possibly achieve, but it means she’s getting away with murder. We only know about Leeds. What happened, who did she recruit, in Durham or Manchester, California, Paris or wherever?’

‘I understand your feelings,’ Piers told me, ‘but I think it’s the best we’ll do. We don’t know how she fits into the scheme of things; whether she was a leading light or a tiny cog; and you can’t catch ’em all, Charlie.’

America had done him good, loosened him up. He was calling me Charlie. After a long silence he said: There is one little titbit I’ve been saving. It might upset all our plans, but on the other hand, it could be useful. How does this sound?’

When he’d finished I said: ‘Right. I’m convinced; let’s do it.’

Piers went home and slept for fourteen hours. On Friday he briefed Tregellis, who had no objections, and on Monday he phoned Melissa and said we were trying to make an appointment for her to have her wisdom teeth fixed. That was my job. The appointment, that is, although I was quite willing to tackle the teeth myself, with the pliers from my little toolkit.

Over the weekend I tidied the garden, did some
washing and took my shirts to the lady who irons them for me. She’s a widow who lives a few doors away. Before her husband died he was the only friend I had in the street. The others don’t like me because my dandelion seeds blow into their gardens. And I’m the law. I stroll round the cul-de-sac and pretend to look at their tax discs, and as soon as I’ve passed they dash out to check them. We had home-made lemonade in her garden, with carrot cake, and I paid for it by making her laugh.

I bought three broadsheets on Sunday and scanned the business pages for news of Fox and Reynard. All of them told the story about him opening Reynard Tower, in Leeds, which would be the new seat of his insurance empire. The jobs, the spokesperson assured us, would be real ones.

Monday I gave Annette the job of negotiating with our contacts at Heckley General to see if they would be able to do Melissa’s teeth at short notice. It would cost us, but a specialist said he could fit her in, after hours. In any other profession it’s called moonlighting, using the boss’s tackle, and would result in the sack. In the NHS it’s normal practice. Can you imagine Kwik-Fit allowing their mechanics to fit exhausts to the cars of their private customers after five o’clock? Not on your Nelly, Jose.

I had a long session with Nigel; questions and answers, role-playing. He’s good at stuff like that,
and it was useful. We lunched at the Chinese and Nigel tested me on my knowledge of the Reynard Organisation. I scored ten out of ten, but I’d done some swotting. Tregellis rang to wish me luck and Sparky poked his head round the door to say the same thing. I felt as if I was about to fight Mike Tyson. I emptied my in-tray and went home, slightly disappointed that there was no postcard of the Acropolis in there.

Tea was a tin of sardines, full of essential oils – no, that’s aromatherapy, but they’re good for you; followed by a piece of my neighbour’s carrot cake that she’d insisted I bring home. I wondered what her apple pies were like. After that I found two big pieces of hardboard and painted them with white emulsion. The art exhibition was two weeks away and I was behind schedule. I did some sketches and by the time I went to bed I’d developed a couple of ideas.

I’ve interviewed people who’ve strangled wives, stabbed lovers, shot strangers, smothered babies. Some filled me with rage, others made me weep. All of them had a story, some redeeming feature, that reminded me of the old saw: There but for the grace of God… Well, nearly all of them. But Fox was different. He was from a mould that is rarely used, thank heaven. If what Crosby had told me was true, his goals in life were self-preservation
and the accumulation of wealth and power. Vast wealth. Monstrous power. The tools he used in the pursuit of these were murder and a cold indifference to the lives of anyone else. He’d had fifty years to hone his skills, and tomorrow I was meeting him. One thing was certain; I wouldn’t come away from that meeting much wiser than when I went in. But I’d know my quarry. I’d have seen him on his own patch, surrounded by his imperial guard of lawyers. I’d know what I was up against the next time we met, and I was sure there’d be a next time.

The weather changed through the night, as the forecasters had predicted. The summer was over. Flurries of rain rattled against the bedroom window like handfuls of gravel tossed by a lover. I sat up with a start. Perhaps it wasn’t rain…but the sound of water running along the gutter told me it was. I sank back into my pillow and tried to sleep.

And then there was Kingston. If Fox was the Führer, then Kingston was the head of his Gestapo. I was sure of it, but I had my own reasons for wanting Kingston. Private reasons.

I’d set the alarm to give me an hour’s lie-in, but when it beeped into life I couldn’t understand why I was late. Then I remembered; today was the day that Mr Fox would snip the ribbon and create a thousand new jobs. And a city would be grateful and honour
him. How many he’d lost that city over the past twenty years was incalculable. A thought struck me, as I lay in that never-never land when my stomach wants feeding but my legs refuse to swing out of bed. It was self-evident, but had completely eluded the last government.
Every time a company streamlines itself by destroying a job, ten other businesses lose a customer
. Not bad for seven on a Tuesday morning, I thought, and my legs kicked themselves from under the duvet and the day began.

I put on my charcoal suit and a blue tie with a pink stripe that added a dash of frivolity. I wouldn’t take my briefcase, I decided, or even a notebook. We’d have a chat, man to man, nice and informal – if I could see him for lawyers – and I’d try to drop a little bombshell just before I left. Something to put them in a panic. I buffed my shoes with the soles of my socks and we were ready.

Traffic into Leeds at that time in the morning is like any normal big-city traffic. A great time to read
War and Peace
or study Mandarin. I timed my run so I’d just miss the nine o’clock peak, if there was such a thing, and hopefully arrive far too early. Perhaps I’d have time for a coffee in the restaurant. We were stop-going on the M621 when I thought I’d catch up on the mornings news. The M621 used to be the only motorway in the world that terminated at a set of traffic lights. Now it peters out in a forest of traffic
cones, but it’ll be good when it’s finished. I pushed the
power
button and a familiar voice finished a story about natterjack toads. ‘Police in Yorkshire…’ she continued.

‘That’s me!’ I thought.

‘…are trying to identify a man who threw himself off the Scammonden bridge over the M62.’

He was, she told us, the umpteenth suicide there since the bridge was constructed. That’ll be a great consolation to the relatives, I thought. A BMW in the fast lane decided he wanted my bit of the slow lane and cut across me. Fifty seconds later he’d done just the opposite. I braked and cursed him but he was too engrossed in his telephone conversation to notice.

‘And a piece of late news has just been handed to me,’ she was saying. ‘The businessman JJ Fox, head of the Reynard Organisation, has been found dead in his hotel room in Leeds. We’ll let you have more on that as soon as we receive it.’

I swung on to the hard shoulder and yanked the handbrake on, but she’d passed us over to the sports presenter, who was saying that our
numero uno
tennis player had lost in straight sets to a nine-year-old from Utah. ‘You should have strangled the little bastard,’ I hissed at the radio as I switched it off and reached for my phone.

I rang the nick and then Tregellis, but it was me
breaking the news to them, so I decided the best place to be was at the Fox Borealis. I indicated right and an artic flashed me out.

The foyer of the hotel was filled with people standing in little hushed groups. There’d been a PC at the entrance, making a note of all visitors, which meant that the death was regarded as suspicious. He told me that Superintendent Isles was in charge and let me in. My old mate Les; that made it easier.

Another PC was guarding the lifts and two detectives were trying to organise the guests into a queue so they could take their names and then let them out to do their selling or conferencing or whatever it was that had brought them to this place on this day. Technicians and reporters in T-shirts and jeans, were wandering around with microphones and tape recorders, talking to anyone who looked as if they might be able to string two words together. A TV person with a big camera was speaking to head office on his mobile. ‘Can you get one of the body?’ they’d be saying.

I introduced myself to the PC at the lift and told him I needed to see Mr Isles. He explained that there was an express lift, for private use, that went straight up to the penthouse, on the fifteenth floor, where Mr Isles was. However, that was out of bounds and only one of the other lifts was in use. I
could go up in it but it only went to the fourteenth floor. I thanked him and he pressed the button.

I stepped out into a moderately large foyer with a blue and gold carpet and several easy chairs. Four figures turned to see who the newcomer was and Les Isles said: ‘Good God! What are you doing here?’