Death of a Cave Dweller (28 page)

“It doesn't matter,” Towers mumbled from behind his hands. “Nothing matters now that Steve knows I killed Eddie.”

“You lied about what happened to you down at the docks, didn't you?” Woodend said.

“I
was
beaten up.”

“Of course you were. But there was no mysterious phone call from a man who claimed to know something about Eddie's death. You were down there on the pick-up, lookin' for a bit of rough trade. Only you picked the wrong sailor, an' instead of him givin' you what you wanted, he worked you over.”

“It could have been worse,” Jack Towers said. “I've got friends who've had bones broken.”

“Geoff Platt over at the
Mersey Sound
will be one of those friends of yours, will he?” Woodend asked.

“Yes.”

“An' Doctor Atkinson from the Royal Liverpool University Hospital?”

“Yes.” Towers spread his fingers a little, as if he wanted to see Woodend's reaction to what he had to say next. “You must be delighted the killer's turned out to be a raving queer,” he continued.

“I'm not one of those fellers who goes around thinkin' homosexuals should be strung up by their thumbs,” Woodend said, and anyone who knew him would have been able to detect an edge of anger slipping into his voice.

“Of course you're not,” Towers said cynically. “At least, you're not one of those fellers who'd ever say so
in public
.”

Woodend slammed his fist down hard on the table, his anger almost full-blown by now. “Listen, one of my best mates in the army was a homo,” he said. “He was a brave soldier, an' a good comrade. He was killed just outside El Alamein, an' I still miss him, even now. So you see, as far as I'm concerned it doesn't really matter who you end up in bed with – it's how you live your life that counts. An' neither me nor the homo lad I served with have ever been cold-blooded killers.”

Woodend's head was pounding. If he stayed in the same room with this man much longer, he'd beat him to a pulp.

“Eddie Barnes didn't deserve to die,” he said. “You had no right to take his life away from him.” He stubbed his cigarette viciously in the ashtray. “Is there anythin' else you'd like to say before we draw up your statement?”

Towers lifted his hands away from his face, and looked Woodend squarely in the eyes. “The only thing I'd care to add is that I love Steve Walker,” he said defiantly.

“What do you think that is?” Woodend demanded. “Some kind of mitigatin' circumstance?”

“I love him, but I've never touched him,” Towers said dreamily, as if he hadn't heard Woodend's words at all. “And never
would
have touched him. He doesn't feel the same towards his own sex as I do. I've always known that. But sometimes you just can't help who you fall in love with, can you?”

“I don't need to hear all this crap,” Woodend said harshly.

But once again, Towers acted as if he hadn't heard him. “All I ever wanted was for the Seagulls to be successful, because I knew that that was what Steve wanted more than anything else in the world. And I was prepared to do whatever was necessary to see that he achieved his ambition.”

Woodend put both his big hands flat on the table, and leant forward towards Towers. He had only one ambition at that moment – to hurt the other man as much as he could.

“So you took one young life, an' nearly took another,” he said. “An' what have you got out of it?”

“Nothing,” Towers said.

“
Less
than nothin',” Woodend told him. “Steve Walker never loved you like you love him, but at least he was very fond of you.” He paused, to make sure the effect of his final words really sank in. “I'm willin' to bet that now, if they were goin' to hang you for this, he'd be elbowin' his way to the front of the queue for the chance to put the rope around your neck.”

It was almost closing time in the Grapes, but in Woodend's book, until the towels were actually over the pumps, there was time for one last pint.

The chief inspector took a sip of best bitter and smacked his lips contentedly. “I'm doin' my best to wash the taste of this case out of my mouth,” he explained to his sergeant.

“How long have you known that Towers is a homosexual?” Rutter asked.

“A while,” Woodend replied. “I'd have mentioned it to you before, but it didn't seem relevant.”

“What put you on to him? Was it just a gut feeling?”

The chief inspector shook his head. “Not at all. I've never been one of those fellers who think that just because a man's a bit effeminate he has to be queer. An' by the same token, I don't assume that because he's built like a brick shithouse, he must automatically chase every bit of skirt he sees. Like you heard me say to Towers, I fought in the army with homos.”

“So what did tip you off?”

“Doctor Atkinson gave Jack Towers special treatment when he was admitted to the hospital after the attack at the docks. A private room, his own telly – the works. Now why should he have done that? I asked Atkinson that very question, an' he claimed it was because Towers was the Seagulls' manager, and he himself was a big fan. Which was, of course, a complete bloody lie.”

“How do you know that?”

“I told him I thought that ‘Lime Street Rock' was one of the best songs Steve Walker had ever written, an' he agreed with me.”

“So what?”

“Think back to the auditions, lad,” Woodend said. “One of the young hopefuls wanted to play ‘Lime Street Rock', an' Steve Walker absolutely hit the roof because he said he wasn't goin' to have anybody else playin' one of the songs that Eddie Barnes wrote. Now if Atkinson had really been a fan of the group, as he claimed he was, he'd have known it was Eddie's song.”

“I see,” Rutter said. “I should have spotted that.”

“So we're back to the question of why Atkinson gave Towers special treatment,” Woodend continued. “Remember what I said at the start of this case – when we were on the ferry comin' across the Mersey – about not all villages bein' geographical?”

“Yes?”

“The only reason Atkinson could have had for lookin' after Towers so well was that they were friends – from the same non-geographical village. But what kind of village would it be that could accommodate both a successful doctor an' a humble shippin' clerk? As soon as I learned that Doctor Atkinson was a homosexual, I had my answer.”

“Very smart,” Rutter admitted.

“Aye,” Woodend agreed, almost complacently. “I do have my moments now an' again.”

Rutter took a sip of his drink, and wondered whether he had better order another round before last orders were called. “And now you're going to tell me how you knew that Jack Towers was the killer?” he asked.

“It was timin' again,” Woodend replied. “When I went to see Geoff Platt over at the
Mersey Sound
, he told me he'd heard Eddie Barnes was leavin' the Seagulls, but he also said he couldn't remember who'd told him. But he
did
remember. He'd got the information from Jack Towers.”

“So why did he lie? Was he deliberately shielding a murderer?”

Woodend absent-mindedly reached across and helped himself to one of his sergeant's cork-tipped cigarettes.

“I'm sure it never occurred to Geoff Platt for an instant that Towers might have killed Eddie Barnes,” he said, “but you're right when you say he was shieldin' him from somethin'. He didn't want to give us a reason to take a closer look at Towers – in case we found out he was a homo. It was simply a case of one villager doin' all he could to protect another.”

“That makes sense,” Rutter agreed.

Woodend smiled, almost mischievously. “But you've still not asked the important question, which is: why did Towers lie to Platt about Eddie leavin' the group in the first place?”

“Why did Towers lie about Eddie leaving the group in the first place?” Rutter asked deadpan, slipping effortlessly into the role of comedian's dupe again.

“Because he didn't have any choice,” Woodend replied. “Look, he'd convinced himself that the Seagulls needed lots of time to practise with their new guitarist before the audition, an' that meant he had to be available even before Eddie Barnes was cold. On the other hand—”

“On the other hand,” Rutter interrupted, “the Mersey
Sound
, which was the best place to advertise for a replacement, went to press before Towers had had a chance to murder Eddie!”

“Exactly,” Woodend agreed. “Even if Eddie Barnes had been plannin' to leave the group – an' he'd have been a fool to do that when things were just startin' to happen for them – he'd have told Steve Walker long before he told Jack Towers. An' Steve said he didn't know anythin' about it. So when I saw that advert in the
Mersey Sound
, it told me that Towers knew Barnes was goin' to die days before it happened – an' that could only mean he was the killer.”

Steve Walker entered the pub and made a beeline for them. “I've just heard you've charged Jack Towers with Eddie's murder,” he said.

“That's right,” Woodend agreed.

A lopsided, ironic grin came to Walker's face. “Well, at least now you won't have to question the lovely Mavis, an' ruin her chances of becomin' a Mother Superior someday,” he said.

“You knew Jack Towers was a homosexual, didn't you?” Woodend asked.

“Yeah, I knew he was queer,” said Steve Walker. “Once you'd knocked around with him for a while, it became pretty obvious.”

Of course he'd known. But he had hidden that knowledge from the police – not because he was a fellow villager as Geoff Platt was, but because protecting people more vulnerable than himself was just part of his nature.

“An' did you also know that he had a big crush on you?” the chief inspector said.

“Yes, I knew Jack had a bit of a thing for me,” Steve Walker said, shrugging awkwardly. “So what? He never tried anythin' on. There was no real harm in it.”

No, Woodend thought. No harm at all. Except that it had resulted in the death of Eddie Barnes – and had almost cost Terry Garner his life, too.

Tears were forming in Steve Walker's eyes. “Why did Jack do it?” he asked, pleadingly.

“He wanted to be rich,” Woodend lied, “an' he thought he'd never make money out of the group as long as Eddie was in it.”

“You're not makin' any sense. How would Eddie have stopped him makin' money?”

“Jack didn't think Eddie was good enough to play with the Seagulls. He thought he'd hold the rest of you back.”

A look of deep sadness came into Steve Walker's eyes. “Do you want to hear somethin' funny?” he said. “Or is the word I'm really lookin' for ‘ironic'?”

“I won't know till I've heard it,” Woodend said softly.

“The
Mersey Sound
had a poll last month. All the readers got the chance to vote on who they thought was the best lead guitarist in the whole of Liverpool. Eddie came top by a mile.” Steve Walker wiped a tear from his eye with his shirt cuff. “Thank you for savin' Terry's life,” he said, and then, without another word, he turned and walked away.

“That was a nice thing you did there, sir – lying about Towers' real motive,” Rutter told his boss.

Woodend's shrug was almost as awkward as Walker's had been earlier. “The lad's had enough tough breaks in his time without havin' to live with the knowledge that, however indirectly, he's responsible for Eddie's death,” he said. “But even though I'm a good liar when I want to be, I don't know if, deep down, he was really fooled.” The chief inspector sighed. “It's a funny thing, is love. Jack Towers has convinced himself that he killed Eddie because he wasn't a good guitarist, but it wasn't that at all, was it?”

“No,” Rutter agreed. “It was jealousy. He killed him – and he would have killed Terry – because they could get closer to Steve Walker than he could.”

Woodend glanced down at his watch. “Well, there'll be some paperwork to do in the mornin', but with any luck we should both be back in London by this time tomorrow night.”

“Yes, sir, it'll be good to be home,” Rutter said, though the thought of seeing Maria and hearing whatever it was that she had to tell him was already starting to churn his stomach up.

J
ack Towers had been in custody for over twenty-four hours when Bob Rutter paid off his taxi and opened his own front gate for the first time in days. There were no welcoming lights shining in the windows of his home, but that didn't necessarily mean Maria had gone to bed, he reminded himself, because – day or night – his wife's world was one of total darkness.

He inserted the key in the lock, turned it as quietly as he could, and eased the front door open.

“Is that you, Bob?” asked a voice from the front parlour.

“It's me,” Rutter said, putting down his suitcase in the hallway and reaching for the light switch.

Maria was sitting on the sofa, her hands sedately folded on her lap. Rutter hadn't been away long, but after all the tense phone calls he had been half expecting some incredible transformation to have taken place in his wife during his absence. He need not have worried. If anything, she looked even more beautiful than he remembered her.

He knelt down in front of her, and took her hands in his. “I missed you,” he said. “And I know you don't want to hear me say this, but I was worried about you, as well.”

She didn't get angry, as she might have done. Instead she smiled the most beautiful smile he thought he had ever seen.

“You're going to have more to worry about than me in future,” she said. The smile suddenly faded, and was replaced by a look of deep concern – perhaps even of fear. “At least, you are if we decide to go ahead with it.”