Unholy Dying (31 page)

Charlie touched Bingle's arm, and the sergeant nodded his permission for him to intervene.

“Didn't it help that Mark had been having it off himself with your sister?”

“Don't call her my sister!” said the boy with whiplash fierceness. “That hopeless cow's nothing to do with my family anymore. I wouldn't nod in the street to a pathetic slob like her—I'd be afraid of catching a whiff of baby's pee. And it didn't help, not one bit. Don't you understand the principle, you black thicky? Once a thing's generally known it's no use anymore. Anyway, Mark wasn't even willing to go and talk to her. She's preggie again, the stupid git, and he was afraid he'd get handed the bill for the maternity clothes and the little knitted things. He's dead ordinary, Mark, and a bit of a coward. If it'd been me I'd have chucked the bill in her face. Who knows how many men she's been going with? Half Shipley, if I know her.”

“But it was Mark who came up with the information about where Father Pardoe was living, wasn't it?”

Lennie gave an ugly grimace.

“Oh, yes. Just happened to overhear it from his prick of a dad. Clever big boy even went and checked it out over at Pudsey and came to me with it, like it was an egg he'd just laid. Hadn't the first idea what to do with it. Thought we might be able to screw money out of Pardoe not to spread it around. I've
hardly been to church, but I know he isn't the type to let himself be blackmailed about a little thing like that. Chicks was a possibility; an address, never.”

“So it was your idea to approach Cosmo Horrocks?”

“Who else's? I tell you, Leary's just brainless muscle. I had the idea, and I made the phone calls. I'd done it before with the boys I'd screwed money out of. Sort of whispered, half-male, half-female voice, with a lot of menace in it. It disorients them. Scares the life out of them.”

His self-love was apparently undentable. Charlie said, “I don't suppose you scared the life out of Cosmo Horrocks.”

“Had him guessing, though,” said Lennie with a catlike smile. “Didn't quite know who or what he was dealing with.”

“But you came to an agreement with him.”

“After a time. Had to play with him a bit, leave him to stew. Second time I rang we struck a bargain. I'd have kept him on the hook longer, because he was dead keen, but if Mark's stupid dad knew, it could have been around the parish in no time.”

“How much did you get out of him?”

“A hundred. Not bad for a bit of paper with an address on it.”

“And how did you receive the money?”

“He handed it over, in the park at Saltaire. It was late, ten o'clock, and practically dark. I can get out of and into my room at home whenever I like—just down the kitchen extension roof my stupid oldies had built a couple of years ago. Most of the time they don't know if I'm at home or not. Anyway, I insisted he wouldn't get the address until he'd handed the money over. He huffed and puffed, but in the end I had him cornered, he wanted it so much. I used Mark's name, because he knew all about the Learys. Told him he'd be along, and he was a champion athlete.”

“And he did come along, didn't he.”

“Course. I wouldn't have gone without backup.”

“And in the end, Horrocks handed over the money and you handed over the address.”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

Lennie blinked.

“Then nothing. He nodded and went off to his car. I gave Mark his wage and we went home.”

“You didn't split fifty-fifty?”

“Just for standing there? You must have taken leave of your senses, black boy.”

“So what else happened with Cosmo Horrocks?”

“Nothing else happened. Over. Finished. Kaput.”

Charlie raised his eyebrows.

“Tell me about the Indian club from the Learys' sports cupboard.”

“Indian club? Don't know what you're talking about.”

“An Indian club went missing from the Learys' cupboard and was put back after the murder. I think you took it.”

“Give it a rest! Why should I do that? And why would I want to murder the git from the
Chronicle
? I just made a packet out of him.”

And that, Charlie thought, was really the nub.

 • • • 

Mark Leary was sweating now. He had had an hour back in the cells and his brain, which was self-obsessed but sharp where his own interests were concerned, had, as the minutes ticked by, come to terms with the mess he was in. Unfortunately it had not come up with any fail-safe idea of how to get him out of it.

“Now, Mark,” said Oddie quietly, “I don't think you should keep up this pretense that you had nothing to do with the
Father Pardoe business. We know from Lennie that you were on hand when the cash and the address were exchanged.”

Mark put on an expression of hauteur.

“Lennie
would
say that.”

“Would he? My impression from Sergeant Peace is that he's quite willing to claim sole credit, if that's the word, for most of his scams.”

“Stupid jerk. That's what comes of getting involved with kids.”

“You could be right, there. I think you'd better tell us exactly what went on in Saltaire Park.”

Mark thought it over and looked at his father, who shook his head. But when the boy spoke again it was clear he'd decided that Oddie was right.

“I just went along as observer, that was all.”

“What exactly do you mean, as an observer?”

“To see fair play. To make sure he didn't pull a fast one. If he had, I'd have stepped in.”

“But he didn't.”

“No.”

“I'm having difficulty with this, Mark,” said Oddie softly. “Because there's this matter of the disappearance of the Indian club from your basement cupboard. Now, I'm willing to bet that when forensics go over that, there will be things that tie it in with Lennie that they will pick up, but nothing that will have been left on it by you. That is, unless you picked it up to examine it after it was returned.”

There was silence and then Mark said, “I didn't. I was scared. I didn't want to have anything to do with it.”

“That's about the first wise thing I've heard of you doing. What I'm wondering is why you're holding back on me, why
you're shielding this boy if you yourself weren't involved in the most important thing that we're investigating.”

Mark muttered something. Oddie couldn't quite hear, but it sounded like “He's gruesome.”

“Come on—tell us what happened. In Saltaire Park, or afterward.”

Mark swallowed. Oddie guessed suddenly that he was afraid.

“It happened like we planned—Lennie planned—up to the handing over. There was a bit of argy-bargy, then Horrocks agreed to hand over the money and then be given the address. We were all standing by one of the seats, well away from the road or railway line. He handed over the money, Lennie gave it to me, and I retreated under a tree in case he tried any funny business. Somehow you could tell he wasn't just going to accept tamely anything Lennie told him to do. Lennie puts people's backs up. He puts mine up.”

“I can understand that.”

“Then Lennie got the address out of his pocket and handed it to Horrocks, and as he took it with his left hand he grabbed Lennie's arm with his right and sat down on a bench. He dragged him across his knee and began spanking him.”

“
Spanking
him?”

“Yes. It was brilliant. Like he was just a little kid. Lennie went nuts. He screamed blue murder and kicked and spat, and I just saw the funny side of it, this smartarse kid with the big opinion of himself being treated like what he really was—no more than a child. I roared with laughter. It was just what Lennie needed.”

“It was very clever,” agreed Oddie. “Cunning too. That's what Horrocks specialized in: humiliating people. Bruising their egos at the most sensitive point.”

“Eventually he just chucked Lennie away and walked coolly off. I really admired him. But Lennie was exploding with rage.
His face was brick red and he was crying, and he started shouting at Horrocks's back: ‘I'll get you, Horrocks. You're a dead man. Start counting the days.' Stuff he'd heard on television. And then he turned on me, and started pummeling me in the chest. I took it for a bit, and then I pushed him away too. But he was terrifying. His language was like I'd never heard before—it was so intense, so crazy, almost. Horrocks was ‘dead meat,' he was going to get more than a spanking back, he was going to die facedown in a pool of his own blood. Then he'd turn his fury on me and say I'd pay for laughing at him, not coming to his rescue. ‘Don't think you'll get off scotfree, you useless git'—that kind of thing, but said in such a way that it made me shudder, somehow.”

“Why on earth did you let him into your house after that?”

“He came up to me in school next day, said he was going to forget about the whole thing, after all we'd got the money, hadn't we? So things went back to normal. All the things I'd been imagining seemed—well, a bit far-fetched. A few days later we'd been playing snooker in the basement and I went upstairs for a leak. When I'd finished I came out onto the landing and saw him going out the front door, walking a bit funny. I guess that's when he took it. He was holding it in front of him.”

“And when did he return it?”

Mark swallowed.

“A couple of nights ago. Came around when he knew I would be at home, and tapped a little grille that gives out onto the front garden—that was our usual procedure, because I was always down in the rec room after I'd finish my homework. I went up to let him in, and he marched past me and down to the basement, carrying the club. When I got down there he was putting it back in the cupboard. He turned around and said, ‘Just borrowed it for a bit of practice,' looking me straight in the
eye. I was terrified. What can you do with one club? Anyway, Lennie wasn't interested in sports, or anything like that; said it was just for kids. He kept on looking at me for what seemed like ages, then he marched out, up the stairs, and left the house. I just stood there—it was like my blood was frozen. I knew what he'd done, what the club had been used for, but I didn't know what to do.”

“So in the end you did nothing.”

“Yes. What could I do?”

He spoke with the naïveté of his age, looking down at his father, who had his head in his hands. To Oddie, Mark seemed the perfect example of a man without principles who has got himself well out of his depth. But there was one unusual ingredient added: the odd spectacle of a confident near-adult who could not disguise the fact that he was terrified by a child.

 • • • 

When Lennie came back into the interview room two hours later with his lawyer, he had lost none of his swagger. In fact, being investigated and interrogated, having the details of his petty-criminal schemes laid out before him, seemed only to have ministered to his monstrous self-love. Oddie had joined the Shipley investigating team, now that it was clear Lennie Norris was into something much deeper than school playground scams. He chose to talk to him in the tone that would aggravate him most—the tone of talking to a naughty boy.

“Well, Lennie, things are becoming a bit clearer to us now.”

“Good, then you can let me go.”

“I don't think that will be in the cards for quite a while yet. After all, you haven't been straight with us, have you?”

“Straight as you fucking deserve.”

“For example, the exchange of the money and the address
didn't go as smoothly as you said, did it? Or as painlessly, you might say”

The boy looked at him hard, his face becoming brick red, his eyes dilating.

“What's that jerk Leary been saying?”

“What we've heard is that when you came to hand over the address, Horrocks took it, but took you as well, and put you over his knee and gave you a jolly good spanking.”

At this the boy exploded. He erupted out of his seat and stood flaming with rage and wounded vanity, stabbing his finger in Oddie's direction as if it were a stiletto.

“And he fucking paid for it, didn't he? I said he would and he did. Thought he could treat me like a kid. I showed him I wasn't a kid, didn't I? I said he'd die facedown in his own blood, and that's what he did. That's what happens to people who mix it with me. You'll find that out, dickhead. That clown Leary would have been next. Will be next. I'm already thinking out what I'm going to do to him, and I'll do it, however long they put me away. Am I the youngest murderer you've ever arrested? The youngest ever? I'd like that. People are going to have to take notice of me. You'd never have caught me if it hadn't been for that arsehole Leary. I'll know next time: act on your own. Keep everything in your own hands. You'll be hearing from me in future. You'll be hearing from me for the rest of your fucking career.”

But Oddie felt he had heard more than enough already.

“Interview terminated at nineteen forty-three hours,” he said, and switched off the tape.

Some days change lives: other days seem to symbolize the fact that some lives will never change.

The days after the arrest of Lennie Norris, and of Mark Leary on less serious charges, were just such days for many of the people in Shipley. Many of them had only the vaguest idea of what was going on, for the papers were circumspect in not naming anyone “for legal reasons.” Parents were forced for once to listen to their children's stories, especially if they went to Bingley Road Comprehensive, or had played cricket or other sports with the older of the boys. The news passed from mouth to mouth in a pre-twentieth-century fashion.

Two people whose lives were changed were the Norrises. The day of Lennie's arrest was the day their world collapsed around them. When, after three days of terrible suspense, he finally consented to see them, the interview was so terrible as to invade every minute of their waking days thereafter, and form the stuff of their nightmares: The abuse, the contempt, the vile language,
above all the cockiness about what he had done and the boasting about what he would do. Norris was a broken man. People even stopped coming into his shop out of curiosity, because the spectacle was too painful. Bettaclothes just waited for an opportunity to sack him without attracting adverse publicity. Mrs. Norris flitted to her nearest shops and straight home again, not attracting adverse comment now because she was obviously a shattered wraith. Aunt Becky suggested they should get in touch with Julie, but Daphne vetoed this. In any case, she would probably not have responded.