A Darker Shade of Blue (5 page)

‘Arthur Fraser.'

‘How do we know that?'

‘Wallet. Inside pocket.'

‘Not robbery then?'

‘Not robbery.'

‘Any idea what he was doing here?'

‘Checking on his new house, apparently. The architect's name's on the board below. I gave him a call. He was with a client the other side of Cambridge.' Helen took a quick look at her watch. ‘Should be here, another thirty minutes or so.'

Will turned back towards the body. ‘He come from round here? Fraser?'

‘Not really. Address the other side of Coventry.'

‘What's he doing having a house built here?'

‘I asked the architect that. Making a new start, apparently.'

‘Not any more.'

*

Malkin and Earl Michaels sat at one of a cluster of wooden tables out front of a canal-side pub. None of the other tables was occupied. The snow had held off but there was a wind, driving in from the north-west, though neither man seemed bothered by the cold. Both were drinking blended Scotch, doubles; Malkin nursing his second, Michaels on his third or fourth.

‘How much,' Michaels asked, ‘always assuming I wanted to go ahead, how much is this going to cost?'

When Malkin told him, he had to ask a second time.

‘That friggin' much?'

‘That much.'

‘Then you can forget it.'

‘Okay.' Downing the rest of his drink in one, Malkin got to his feet.

‘No. Hey, hey. Wait a minute. Wait up.'

‘Look,' Malkin said, ‘no way I want to push you where you don't want to go.'

‘Come on, it's not that. You know it's not that. Nobody wants that … Nobody wants it more than me. That bastard. I'd like to get hold of that fucking shotgun of his and let him have it myself.'

‘And end up inside doing fifteen to life.'

‘I know, I know.' Michaels shook his head. He was a heavy man and the weight sat ill upon him, his body lumpen, his face jowly and red.

Malkin sat back down.

‘That sort of money,' Michaels said. ‘I'd be lucky to earn that in a year. A good year at that.'

Malkin shrugged. ‘You want a job well done …'

‘Listen.' Leaning in, Michaels took hold of Malkin's sleeve. ‘I could go down some pub in the Meadows, ask around. Time it takes to have a good shit, there'd be someone willing to do it for a couple of hundred quid.'

‘Yes,' Malkin said. ‘And ten days after that the police would have him banged up inside and he'd give you up first chance he got. Listen to him, you'd been the one talked him into it, forced him more or less, did everything except pull the trigger.'

Michaels knew he was right.

‘You want another?' he said, eyeing his empty glass.

Malkin shook his head. ‘Let's get this sorted first.'

The money,' Michaels said, ‘I don't see how …'

‘Borrow it,' Malkin said. ‘Building society. The bank. Tell them you want to extend. I don't know. Add on a conservatory. Put in a loft.'

‘You make it sound easy.'

‘It is if you want it to be.'

For several minutes neither man spoke. Whoever had been the centre of all the police attention at the court had been taken in under close guard and now, indeed, there was a helicopter making slow small circles above their heads.

‘That bastard Silver,' Michaels said. ‘He's going to make a fucking fortune out of this.'

‘Yes.'

‘Smelling of fucking roses won't be in it.'

‘That's true.'

‘All right, all right. But listen, I'm going to need a few days. The cash, you know?'

Malkin laid a hand on his arm. ‘That's okay. Within reason, take all the time you need. Silver's not going anywhere quite yet. Meantime, I'll ask around, make a few plans.'

‘We've got a deal, then?'

The skin around Malkin's grey eyes creased into a smile. ‘We've got a deal.'

*

What was it they said about converts? They were always the strictest adherents to the faith? Since he'd turned away from a thirty-a-day habit two years ago, Will had been that way about smoking. Just about the only thing he found hard to take about Helen was the way her breath smelled when she'd come in from outside, sneaking a cigarette break at the rear of the building. Not so long back he'd given her a tube of extra-strong mints and she'd handed them back, saying they were bad for her teeth.

It was the day after Fraser's body had been found.

Careful examination of the scene had found little in the way of forensic evidence; no stray hairs or fingerprints, no snatches of fabric snagged by chance on ladder or doorway. A series of footprints, fading in the slow-melting snow, had been traced across two broad fields; at the furthest point, close in against the hedge, there were tyre tracks, faint but clear. A Ford Mondeo with similar patterned tyres, stolen in Peterborough the day previously, was discovered in the car park at Ely station. Whoever had killed Fraser could have had another car waiting or have caught a train. South to Cambridge and London; east towards Norwich, west to Nottingham and beyond.

It was an open book.

‘Fraser,' Will said. ‘I've been doing some checking. Fifty-two years old. Company director. Divorced five years ago. Two kids, both grown up. Firm he was running went under. Picked himself up since then, financially at least, but it seems to have been pretty bad at the time.'

‘That was when the wife left him?'

‘How d'you know she was the one who left?'

Helen touched her fingertips to her temple. ‘Female intuition.'

‘Bollocks!'

‘Excuse me, is that a technical term?'

‘Definitely. And you're right, she walked away. What with that and the business thing, Fraser seems to have fallen apart for a while, started drinking heavily. Two charges of driving with undue care, another for driving when over the limit. Just under three years ago he lost control behind the wheel, went up on to the kerb and hit this eight-year-old. A girl.'

Pain jolted across Helen's face. ‘She was …'

Will nodded. ‘She was killed. Not outright. Hung on in hospital for five days more.'

‘What happened to Fraser?'

‘Fined six thousand pounds, banned from driving for eighteen months …'

‘Eighteen months?'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘And that was it?'

‘Two years inside.'

‘Of which he served half.'

Will nodded. ‘Two-thirds of that in an open prison with passes most weekends.'

‘That's justice?'

Will shook his head. ‘Not so's you'd notice.'

Helen drew breath. ‘What time's the post-mortem?'

‘An hour from now?'

She nodded. ‘My car or yours?'

*

Malkin showed the appropriate credit card and booked a room at the Holiday Inn under an assumed name. It was a city he knew, though not well, and it was doubtful that anyone there knew him. Average height, average build, he was blessed with one of those faces that were instantly forgettable, save possibly for the eyes.

At the central library he read through the coverage of Silver's appeal and then the reporting of the original shooting and trial. Aside from Silver's own faded celebrity, much was made of the delinquent lifestyle of Wayne Michaels and his companion that evening, Jermaine Royal. Both young men had been in trouble with the police since their early teens; both had been excluded, at various times, from school. An accident, one compassionate reporter said of Wayne Michaels, just waiting to happen.

Malkin found a cut-and-paste biography on the shelves.
The Fall and Fall of Alan Silver.
He took it to one of the tables on the upper floor to read; just himself and a bunch of students beavering away at their laptops, listening to their iPods through headphones.

Silver's mother had been a chorus girl, his father a third-rate comedian in music hall and a pantomime dame; Alan himself first appeared on stage at the age of six, learning to be his father's stooge. A photograph showed him in a sailor suit, holding a silver whistle. By the age of seventeen he was doing a summer season at Scarborough, complete with straw hat and cane, Yorkshire's answer to Fred Astaire. There were spots on popular radio shows,
Variety Bandbox
and
Educating Archie;
even some early television,
Café Continental
with Hélène Cordet.

Three marriages, but none of them stuck; no children, apparently. A veiled suggestion that he might be gay. In the eighties, he had something of a comeback in the theatre, playing a failed music hall performer in a revival of
The Entertainer,
the part originally played by Laurence Olivier. Asked how he did it, Silver replied, ‘I just close my eyes and think of my old man.'

Soon after this he was featured on
This is Your Lift
and had some brief success with ‘Mama Liked the Roses'. Somehow he kept working into his sixties, mostly doing pantomime, trotting out his father's old routines at the likes of Mansfield and Hunstanton.

Oh, no, it isn't!

Oh, yes, it is!

He bought an old farmhouse between Newark and Nottingham. Retired, more or less.

Malkin phoned Michaels that evening, wanting to make sure he was still on board; asked a few questions about Wayne's friends. Something Wayne's pal, Jermaine, had claimed at the trial, that they'd been out to Silver's place before and he'd told them come back any time. Did Michaels think there was any truth in that?

Michaels had no bloody idea.

‘Besides,' Michaels said, ‘what difference if there was?'

None, Malkin told him. None at all.

‘Too bloody right,' Michaels said. ‘Dead is fucking dead.'

The phone rang and before Will could reach it, Helen had snatched it up. Coat buttoned up against the cold, she had just come in from outside.

‘Lorraine,' she said, passing the phone swiftly across.

Will's throat went dry and his stomach performed a double somersault, but all his wife wanted was to remind him to pick up an extra pint of milk on his way home if possible. Will assured her he'd do what he could.

‘No news?' Helen asked, once he'd set down the phone.

‘No news.'

‘Well, I've got something.'

‘You're not pregnant, too?'

‘Chance would be a fine thing.'

Will stood back and looked her over. ‘You want to get pregnant?'

‘You're offering?'

He grinned. It was a good grin, took maybe ten years off his age and he knew it. ‘Not today.'

‘Damn!' Helen smiled back. She liked flirting with him; it was something they did. Somehow it helped them along; kept them, Helen sometimes thought, from ever getting close to the real thing.

‘You want to tell me your news?' Will said.

‘You know that expanse of water the other side of Ely? Close to the railway line?'

‘I think so.'

‘These kids were out there the day Fraser was killed. Late morning. They'd taken a makeshift toboggan, thinking the water might have frozen over, but it hadn't. Just a little at the edges maybe, but that's all. Not worth taking any risks; near the centre it's pretty deep.'

Will nodded, waiting, perched on the edge of a desk. She'd get to it in her own time.

‘While they were there, the Nottingham train went through. They didn't know it was that, but I've checked. One of the boys swears he saw someone throwing an object from the window between the carriages. Just for a moment, he thought it looked like a gun.'

‘How old? This kid, how old is he?'

‘Nine? Ten?'

‘You think he's any way reliable?'

‘According to his mother, he's not the kind to make things up.'

‘Why's he only come forward now?'

‘Mentioned it to his mum at the time. She didn't think anything of it till she saw something about the investigation on the local news.'

‘You know what the boss is going to say. Divers don't come cheap.'

‘Not even if they're our divers?'

‘Not even then.'

‘Think you can persuade him?'

‘What else have we got?'

‘So far? Diddly-squat.'

‘Why don't I tell him that?'

*

‘
Instant Tanning
' read the sign in the window. ‘
Manicure, Pedicure
' in similar lettering below. ‘
Top Notch Beauty Salon
' above the door. Lisa was sitting on the step outside, pink tunic, sandals, tights, smoking a cigarette.

Malkin crossed towards her and as he came close she glanced up and then away.

‘Busy?' Malkin said.

She looked at him through an arc of smoke. ‘Takin' the piss, right?'

By appearance she was a mixture of African-Caribbean and Chinese, but her accent was East Midlands through and through, Notts rather than Derby.

‘Lisa?'

‘Yeah?'

Malkin squatted low on his haunches, face close to hers. ‘You used to know Wayne Michaels.'

‘So what if I did?'

‘I'm sorry. About what happened.'

‘Yeah, well. Been and gone now, i'n't it?'

‘You've moved on.'

‘Something like that.'

‘Good.'

Something about his voice made her feel ill at ease. ‘Look, this place.' She looked up at the sign. ‘It's what it says it is, you know. Not one of them massage parlours, if that's what you're thinking.'

‘Not at all. It's just, if you've got the time, I thought we could talk a bit about Wayne? Maybe his mate, Jermaine? You were friendly with both of them, weren't you?'

Lisa narrowed her eyes. ‘You're not the police, are you?'

‘Perish the thought.'

‘Not some reporter?'

Malkin shook his head. ‘I used to know Wayne's father a little, that's what it is.'