Least of Evils (24 page)

Peach had at that moment no idea who had killed Oliver Ketley; he still rather favoured George French for the crime, though he knew how difficult it would be to pin it upon him. But if the killer was Martin Price, he had a doughty ally in his lover; Peach would much rather have Greta Ketley on his side than against him. With one of his quick switches, he said quietly, ‘Did your husband carry a personal weapon, Mrs Ketley?'

Greta switched her attention from the long, menacing black face to the round white one beside it. ‘A personal weapon?'

‘A firearm for his own use. A pistol or a revolver. Most people involved in the activities in which he made his money carry some form of personal protection.'

‘He had bodyguards to protect him, when he went into dangerous places. You should be asking James Hardwick about this. He organizes that side of things.'

‘I know he does and I've already spoken to him. Now I'm speaking to you, I'm asking you for a second time, did your husband carry a firearm on his person?'

‘He had a handgun of his own.'

‘I see. Was he carrying it on the night he died?'

They'd questioned others; Peach had already told her that. She needed to be very careful what she said now. ‘He had a pistol. I don't know any details. I never let him tell me. I hate things like that.' She was making every effort to convince them, but her voice sounded to her very flat as she spoke.

‘How did he carry this pistol?'

She glanced sideways at Janey, then down at the hand which lay still on top of hers. ‘I don't think he carried it all the time. But as I say, I'm not really sure about that – we haven't been very close in the last few years, and certainly not since I began to see Martin.' She spat the last phrase at him vehemently, as if it were an assertion of integrity. ‘He had some sort of harness which fitted the pistol beneath his arm.'

‘Yes. A shoulder holster. He was wearing it when he died. Do you know the make of his pistol?'

‘No. I hate weapons and bullets, as I said, because they frighten me. I – I think he might have changed it recently, because I saw him loading it and examining it carefully.'

‘How long ago was this?'

‘A few weeks back. I can't be precise. I hate the things and try to avoid them.'

The third time she had asserted that. It was probably true, but Peach wondered whether the lady did protest too much. ‘Where did he keep this handgun and its ammunition?'

‘Not in the bedroom. I wouldn't have that. Probably in his office somewhere.' She looked from one to the other of the police faces. ‘He was shot with this pistol, wasn't he?'

‘We believe he was, yes. There was a rather clumsy attempt to make it look like suicide.'

She flinched on that, which made them wonder if she took it as an insult to her or her lover's handiwork in the Bentley. Peach asked, ‘Would you be able to identify the weapon, if it was indeed the one he carried?'

She said dully. ‘No, I wouldn't. I've never wanted to know one weapon from another. I don't know who did this. It wasn't me and it wasn't Martin. I've told you all I can.'

Greta turned to look at Janey Johnson and answered her encouraging smile with a small one of her own. She looked exhausted, almost as if she had been confronting the detail and the reality of her husband's murder for the first time.

SEVENTEEN

G
eorge French didn't feel the cold. A raw wind was swirling between the high buildings, making most people hurry about their business. But when he was on a job, George never felt the cold. Afterwards, perhaps, when the business was done and the man dead, he would notice the temperature, would feel the cold biting suddenly in fingers which had been warm and supple minutes earlier when they were working.

He had never lived here. Birmingham always felt an alien city to him. He felt no glow of recognition as the multiple towers of high-rise flats came into view and he turned his car off the M6 and towards the city centre. Yet he knew the small section of the city which was his goal, near the old canals and a mile away from the redeveloped Bullring, almost as well as if he had grown up in the place. He had killed here before. He had a map of the terrain around him committed to his memory. He was familiar with the labyrinth of streets and their buildings, old and new, almost as if he had been raised among them.

He parked the dark blue Ford Focus very near the corner, where it was at the head of the row of parked cars and no one could park in front of it. Ready for a quick getaway. But not so quick that it would excite attention, he hoped. That would mean that things hadn't gone to plan. The Focus was deceptively powerful, with a two-litre engine which could accelerate swiftly to well over a hundred, if necessary. But that too was only a precaution, so that speed was there if needed. He had accelerated hard in the Focus only twice in the three years he had driven the car. Speed excited attention; if you killed people for money, it was much better not to draw attention to yourself.

He could see everything he needed to from here. His car commanded a view of the crossroads, with the high warehouse on his right and the thirties cinema which was now a nightclub with lap-dancing club on his left. He picked up the
Daily Telegraph
from beside him and pretended to read, his eyes not on the print but on the comings and goings of the vehicles and pedestrians in front of him. He liked to use the
Telegraph,
that organ of the conservative middle classes, when he was preparing to kill.

Twenty minutes passed slowly. He didn't mind that; it was what he had expected. He could feel the tension rising as the moment came nearer, like an actor fighting stage fright as his entry approached. He felt his pulse pounding a little faster in his temple as he watched the door of the club. His mouth was dry now; good. He ticked off the symptoms as the time approached, registering them as old friends who guaranteed his efficiency.

The big maroon Jaguar arrived within five minutes of the time he had calculated. They set themselves up for trouble, these people, driving big, flashy, noticeable cars like that. French was out of his car as the Jag eased into its parking place, walking swiftly towards the driver. He was thin, wiry, easily missed in his shabby blue anorak. The Jaguar driver was a heavy man, overweight as many of his like became around fifty, the result of a lifestyle which was too easy and too affluent. He blew out his cheeks as the cold wind hit him after the warmth of the car, then moved towards the door of the club.

George French had timed it right. His quarry was within two yards of the door when he brushed against him. There was a silencer on the pistol, but he also had it against the man's chest when he fired it. The sound was minimal. The only witness was a hundred yards away; he thought at first that the man had just slipped and fallen. The target was dead or dying, but French put a second bullet through his temple to make absolutely sure.

He was back in the Focus before anyone appeared from the club, easing away from the kerb, then departing quietly in the opposite direction from that which the Jaguar had arrived. This time the high blocks of council flats which heralded the motorway were a welcome sight. French observed the fifty limit carefully, then eased the car up to over seventy when it ended. Early afternoon was the quietest time on the busy M6; he was back in his anonymous bungalow in Oldham within a hundred minutes.

He changed swiftly into his gardening clothes and completed the digging of the vegetable plot at the bottom of his patch. His neighbour came in when he had been there for two minutes and complimented him on his industry on this raw day.

‘Good temperature for digging!' said George with a smile. ‘You don't feel the cold, once you get going. I shall be finished soon – I've been at it for two hours. And enough is enough!' No harm in encouraging the odd witness to your whereabouts at the time of the latest gangland killing in Birmingham.

Three hours later, he rang Jack Burgess in Alderley Edge. ‘Market day Wednesday,' he said. He didn't need to give his name; it was the code they had agreed to signify the successful conclusion of an assignment.

‘Excellent. No stall this week.' As expected, Burgess had no further work for him at the moment.

Before he could put the phone down, French said, ‘The Brunton market. The Ketley job. Someone blabbed about the down-payment. Someone at your end. The police knew.'

A pause, so long that he wondered if the man was going to react at all. Gangster bosses didn't like being told there were flaws in their organization. Then Burgess's heavy voice said, ‘Thanks for the information. I'll make enquiries.'

Chung Lee had every reason to be pleased with his accommodation at Thorley Grange. The room was fourteen feet long and nine feet wide. Chung, with his fascination for figures and precision, had measured the place as one of his first actions after moving in.

That did not include the en suite, with its lavatory and washbasin and shower, which was a further seven feet by six feet; at one time he would have used metric figures, but the British preferred feet and yards, so that was good enough for Chung, who believed that he should fit unobtrusively into his adopted country.

He liked England. He was learning things he had never thought he would learn. Perhaps he would stay here. Perhaps he would indeed open up his own restaurant eventually, as he told everyone he wanted to do. But he wasn't looking too far ahead; these things might be outside his control.

It was the first time the CID men had seen his quarters. They looked unhurriedly around them, as was their wont in new surroundings, and decided as he had that Lee was fortunate in the living quarters allotted to him. When you were a single man operating as a full-time residential employee, the room you were given was a highly important factor in your life. It was the place where you lived and slept, where you spent more than half of your existence. Job satisfaction was important during your hours in the kitchen, but for resident staff, accommodation almost merged with job satisfaction. If you found where you lived depressing and claustrophobic, you were hardly going to give full value in the kitchens, or to get much joy out of life in general.

Peach had seen all kinds of rooms where single people had to exist; this was one of the best. It was neither depressing nor claustrophobic. It had a large, west-facing window with a view over the kitchen garden at the rear of the Grange to the woods beyond the wall of the estate. There was a close-fitting blind which would shut out the evening light when the setting sun threatened to dazzle. There was a picture on each of the long walls, one a Lakeland view of Blea Tarn and the Langdale Pikes, the other a still life of fruit in a bowl. Both, he judged, had been provided by the anonymous furnishers of the Grange rather than by Lee himself. There was a television on a stand, with a remote control beside it, a single wardrobe, a chest of drawers, two easy chairs and a bed, all sitting upon a fitted carpet. Everything was scrupulously neat and clean.

There were no photographs, no ornaments which seemed personal. There was nothing to identify this pleasant, comfortable room with its occupant. That might be no more than a reminder that Chung Lee had only occupied it for a few weeks. It might on the other hand mean that he was a man who habitually travelled light and did not put down roots.

As if he felt no sense of ownership, Chung stood awkwardly waiting whilst the CID men inspected his quarters. It was left to them to decide the positions for the trio in this mini-drama. ‘Cosy, this!' said Percy Peach, as if he came habitually into the quarters of domestic staff at places like Thorley Grange. ‘I think I shall sit here.' He moved one of the easy chairs a yard, so that it had its back to the window. ‘And Detective Sergeant Northcott will be perfectly comfortable sitting on the edge of your bed.'

Chung watched them dispose themselves, then sat uneasily in the second armchair, aware that his vision could not take in the man on his left at the same time as Peach sitting opposite him. The DCI smiled blandly at him. Those who knew Peach, as Lee did not, would have expected this to be a prelude to aggression. He said quietly, ‘We needed to see you again, as I think I warned you we might when we spoke on Monday. There are certain omissions in the account of yourself and your movements which you gave to us then.'

‘Omissions?'

‘Things you did not tell us, Mr Lee. A less charitable man than me might have used the term deceptions.'

‘I did not deceive you, Mr Peach.'

Peach's eyebrows hoped skywards alarmingly. ‘Really? I think you did, Mr Lee. Well, we shall perhaps be able to establish just what you did and why in the next half hour or so.' He stretched his legs in front of him and crossed his ankles, well aware that half an hour seemed an impossibly long time for an interviewee with things to conceal.

The DCI nodded a couple of times, then said, ‘Your brother, Mr Lee. The one who plays for Norwich City.'

‘The soccer player, yes. I have not spoken to—'

‘He doesn't exist, does he? It is an entirely different Lee who plays football in Norwich. He'd never heard of you.'

Chung looked at Peach's shoes. They seemed very black and extraordinarily shiny. ‘It's – it's not important. It has nothing to do with Mr Ketley's death.'

‘It's always important when you tell lies to the police. Why did you do it?'

‘I don't know. Really I don't. Someone asked me quite a long time ago if this man was my brother and I said yes. I was new in the country then and it seemed to make me – well, less of a foreigner, I suppose. It had that effect on the man who asked me. So I built it into my background, when I talked to other people, and it helped me. The English people seemed to find it easier to accept me into their midst as a working colleague with a brother who played football. Your soccer is very important to you, is it not?'

Peach thought of the agonies and ecstasies he had endured during thirty years of following Brunton Rovers and smiled. ‘It is, yes. But that does not excuse your lying to CID officers in a murder investigation.'