Dying Fall (16 page)

When he had finished his prepared statement, he threw the meeting open to questions.

‘When do you expect to make an arrest?' asked one reporter, with annoying predictability.

‘You should know by now that I never divulge that kind of information,' Marlowe replied reproachfully.

‘In other words, you've no idea,' the reporter countered, in a clumsy attempt to goad him into some indiscretion.

‘In other words, I am not prepared to prejudice the progress of my investigation simply to give you a story which will help you when it comes to negotiating your next pay rise,' Marlowe said, and was pleased to hear a few amused titters of laughter from around the room. ‘Next question?'

Elizabeth Driver's right hand shot up immediately. She was wearing a glove on it, though there was not one on her left, and for a moment Marlowe wondered why that should be. Then he turned his mind to the more pressing problem of whether to allow her to ask the next question, and decided that since he would have to let her speak eventually, it might be best just to get it over with.

‘Yes, Miss Driver?' he said.

‘Why does the progress of your investigation involve picking up tramps in Whitebridge and dropping them the other side of the borough's border?' Elizabeth Driver asked.

‘I beg your pardon!' Marlowe said.

‘Why does it involve shipping tramps out of Whitebridge and abandoning them in Accrington?' Driver clarified.

Marlowe was starting to sweat. ‘As far as I'm aware, Miss Driver, no such thing has occurred,' he said. ‘But if I were to find out that the practice you've just described has, in fact, been going on …'

‘Do you deny that you gave Constable Crabtree two pounds?' Driver demanded.

Oh Jesus! Marlowe groaned inwardly.

‘It's possible that I may have given one of the men serving under me some money,' he said. ‘Now I think about it, I'm certain I did. But I can't recall, for the moment,
why
I gave it to him.'

‘Then let me help you remember,' Driver ploughed on relentlessly. ‘In order to get the tramps into the van in the first place, you had to bribe them. And what you chose to bribe them with was booze. So you gave the two pounds to Constable Crabtree, who gave them to the owner of the off-licence …'

‘This is pure fantasy!' Marlowe exploded.

‘… who, in turn, gave them to me,' Driver continued, reaching into her handbag with her gloved hand and producing two pound notes. ‘These are the notes in question. My fingerprints won't be on them, of course, because I'm wearing a glove, but I'm sure your police laboratory – which you never tire of telling us is one of the finest in the country – should have no difficulty finding evidence of
your
prints.'

‘What the bloody hell did you think you were playing at?' Tel Lowry demanded angrily, down the telephone line.

‘I … I was simply trying to defuse the situation,' Henry Marlowe said. ‘Charlie bloody Woodend wanted to keep the bobbies on the night patrol, and you wanted them taken off. Neither of you was going to budge an inch, and I was caught right in the middle of it. And since I couldn't see any way to resolve the problem as it stood, I thought I'd try and make it go away instead.'

‘By moving the tramps out of our jurisdiction?'

‘Well, yes.'

‘How
many
of them have you transported?'

‘Probably no more than half a dozen.'

‘You're sure about that?'

‘Certain. There would have been more, but then that Driver woman stuck her bloody oar in.'

‘That's something to be thankful for, at least,' Lowry said. ‘Accrington Council's been kicking up a stink since the news broke, but if it
is
only six of them we're talking about, we can probably weather the storm.'

Marlowe let out a sigh of relief. ‘Thank you, Tel,' he said. ‘Thank you so much.'

‘For what?' Lowry asked.

‘For saving my bacon.'

‘You seem to be labouring under some kind of misapprehension here, Henry,' Lowry told him. ‘When I said
we
could probably weather the storm, I was talking about my party in particular, and the council in general. In no way, shape or form was I referring to you.'

‘You can't be serious,' Marlowe gasped.

‘The Police Authority is meeting this evening with the sole purpose of considering your future,' Lowry said.

‘And couldn't you tell them I was only trying to …?'

‘But if I was you, I wouldn't bother waiting for their verdict. If I was you, I'd already be clearing out my desk.'

‘H
ow you doin', Col?' Scuddie asked Beresford, when he joined the hard mods outside the chip shop. ‘Beaten up any Pakis recently?'

Beresford grinned. ‘No, I haven't,' he admitted. ‘I seem to be losin' my touch.'

‘It's easy enough to
say
you've beaten up Pakis,' Big Bazza said sourly. ‘Actually
doin
' it is somethin' else.'

The rest of the gang had accepted him easily enough, Beresford thought, but Big Bazza, who was probably starting to see him as a rival, was not so open to the idea – and Big Bazza was the one he really
needed
to get close to. Even so – and however much it was necessary that they become friends – he couldn't let what Bazza had just said go unchallenged.

Beresford squared up to the gang's leader. ‘Are you callin' me a liar?' he demanded. ‘Because if you are, we know how we can settle it, don't we?'

Big Bazza did no more than grin. He didn't want a fight. Why would he, when he had already planted seeds of doubt about his potential rival in the minds of the other gang members?

‘No, I'm not callin' you a liar,' he told Beresford. ‘All I'm sayin' is that
so far
you haven't done anythin' to convince us you're
not
.'

‘Paki!' Little Bazza hissed, and the whole gang turned to look.

A woman wearing a long tunic with trousers beneath it – and with her head sheathed in a scarf – was passing them on the opposite side of the street.

‘Paki bitch!' one of the gang called out.

‘Piss off back to your own country, you black slag!' another added.

The woman immediately increased her pace.

‘That's right, run for it, you cow,' Little Bazza jeered.

‘She's scared,' Beresford said thoughtfully. ‘But she's not as scared as she should be. Not
yet
.'

And before any of the others had had time to answer him, he was crossing the road and following the woman.

Once he was in position behind her, Beresford hunched his shoulders, put his hands under his armpits, and adopted the bow-legged gait of a chimpanzee. The rest of the hard mods, still on the other side of the road, thought it was one of the most hilarious things that they had ever seen.

The woman was aware she was being followed and she began walking even faster, but even with his own awkward style of moving, Beresford had no trouble in keeping up with her.

It was not until the two of them had reached the corner of the street that the woman appeared to lose her nerve and glance over her shoulder in order to see just how
serious
the threat behind her was.

It seemed to the watching gang that this was just the signal that Beresford had been waiting for. He lashed out with his right boot, catching the woman on the upper thigh, and kicking her legs from under her. She fell backwards – as she was bound to – and cracked her head on the pavement.

Beresford looked down at the prone figure, as if inspecting his handiwork, then spat on her once, turned and walked back the way he had come.

There was no more laughter and applause from the gang. In fact, a sudden silence had descended on them.

‘I don't think you should have done that,' Little Bazza said, when Beresford rejoined the group.

‘Oh? An' why's that?' Beresford demanded. ‘Afraid we'll get in trouble with the police?'

‘No, it's not that,' Little Bazza said, eager to show that thoughts of the police didn't bother
him
. ‘But she's … she's a woman.'

‘She's a Paki monkey!' Beresford said.

‘Yeah, well, I know that, don't I? But … but maybe you've killed her.'

‘So what if I have?' Beresford asked. ‘That'll just stop her bringin' any more Paki monkeys into the world, won't it?'

But he had not killed her. Though the woman had been lying still for a while, she now climbed painfully to her feet, and hobbled away.

‘Shouldn't we be movin' on?' Scuddie asked.

‘Why?' Beresford wondered. ‘She won't go to the police. An' even if she does, they won't listen to her. Because why? Because they hate Pakis as much as we do.'

‘Yeah, but what if she tells her family?' Little Bazza asked. ‘They might come here mob-handed, lookin' for us.'

‘That's what I'm hopin' for,' Beresford said. ‘That's the main reason why I did it. I fancy a good punch-up.' He paused, as if he'd suddenly realized he'd been talking out of turn. ‘But it's not up to me whether we stay or go, is it?' he continued. ‘It's up to Big Bazza. He's the leader of the gang. Isn't that right, Bazza?'

‘Bloody right,' Bazza agreed, looking at him with approval, and also – perhaps – with just a hint of gratitude.

‘What I don't understand is why you had to open your mouth in that press conference,' Elizabeth Driver's editor said aggrievedly, from the other end of the line.

‘I needed to confirm my story before I ran with it,' Driver said.

‘Why?' the editor asked, now sounding more puzzled than angry. ‘That kind of thing's never bothered you before.'

‘Maybe I'm turning over a new leaf,' Driver suggested.

‘Well, if you do, you'll be no good to me
or
this paper,' the editor pointed out. ‘We could have had an exclusive if you'd just kept quiet.'

‘We
do
have an exclusive – of sorts,' Driver told him. ‘When all the other papers report on the story, they'll have no choice but to admit that it was the
Gazette
's star reporter who broke it.'

‘That's not the same as having a scoop,' the editor grumbled.

No, it wasn't, Driver agreed silently. It was
better
than a scoop – at least from her viewpoint. Her name would be in
all
the papers, not just her own. She would become a minor national celebrity. And there couldn't possibly be any better publicity for her book than that.

However, the book wasn't out yet, and until it was she still needed her job, so perhaps it was time to extend the olive branch.

‘I'm really sorry, Rick,' she said with a mock sincerity that was so practised it sounded better than the real thing. ‘Next time I have an exclusive, I promise I won't breathe a word to anybody. And there
will be
a next time, you know – because I'm too good a reporter not to be able to do it again.'

‘Well, make sure it's soon,' the editor said, somewhat mollified.

As she replaced the phone on its cradle, Driver found herself wondering who could be cast in the film version of her book.

Michael Caine or Tom Courtney would both be perfect for Bob Rutter, but Woodend would be more of a problem. Perhaps Stewart Granger or James Mason might be able to carry it off.

She hoped Bob wouldn't take it too badly when he found out about the book, and from the way things had been developing recently, she was
almost
sure that he wouldn't.

The hard mods were sitting around the base of Sir Robert Peel's statute in the Corporation Park when the Town Hall clock chimed ten, and as soon as the sound had died away Big Bazza stood up and said, ‘Well, I think I'll take myself off home.'

That night, nobody accused him of wanting to run home to his mum. The truth was, they were all ready to go home, too, because after all the excitement of watching Col in action had faded away, the evening had begun to feel like a bit of a drag.

‘Where are we meetin' tomorrow night, Baz?' Scuddie asked.

‘Meet where you like,' Bazza said, with careless indifference. ‘I won't be here. I'm off on my holidays.'

‘Holidays?' Scuddie repeated. ‘At this time of year?'

‘That's right.'

‘Well, rather you than me. I wouldn't fancy lyin' on the beach at Blackpool in this weather.'

‘I'm not goin' to Blackpool. I'm goin' to Spain,' Bazza said, obviously relishing the sound of the last word.

The announcement had the bombshell effect on the rest of the gang that he'd known it would. People like them didn't go to anywhere exotic like
Spain
. The whole idea was inconceivable.

‘Where'd you get the money from?' Little Bazza asked.

‘Been savin' up.'

‘On
your
wages?'

‘I've been puttin' a little bit away each week. It's surprisin' how quickly it mounts up.' Big Bazza started to walk away, then turned round and said, ‘So I'll see you lot next week – when I'm lovely an' brown.'

‘Jammy sod!' said Scuddie, his voice thick with envy. ‘Isn't he a jammy sod?' he asked the others.

No! Beresford thought. He's a bastard! A complete bloody bastard!

It was half-past ten when Beresford arrived at the Drum and Monkey, and the only two people sitting at the team's usual table were Woodend and Paniatowski.

‘Is Inspector Rutter coming later?' Beresford asked – and the moment he saw the look on Woodend's face, he knew he had made a mistake.

‘Inspector Rutter won't be comin'
at all
,' the chief inspector growled. ‘Inspector Rutter's got better things to do with his time than consort with the likes of us.'