‘Think I’ll get one of those corner baths put into my place,’ said Percy Peach ruminatively. ‘There’d be room for two of us in one of those.’
‘Wouldn’t suit your lifestyle,’ said Lucy Blake. ‘We’d both be late for work if you had a bath like that, and that would really set the tongues wagging. I prefer my nice modern shower, where I can shut the door on you!’ She felt a little more in control of her man when they were in her neat modern flat than in the icy bedroom of his fifties house.
‘Too small for two, that little square box is,’ said Percy regretfully. ‘I can’t get in there with you without leaving something sticking out, and you’re lethal with that sliding door.’
‘It’s cosy and warm and reliable,’ said Lucy primly, measuring the distance between Percy and the shower with an experienced eye.
‘Just like me!’ said Percy eagerly. ‘Prove it to you again, if you like!’
‘Boasting again. And I shan’t call your bluff, in view of the danger to your ageing bones!’ She dropped her bathrobe to the ground and leapt quickly into shower, ignoring the moan with which he greeted her sudden nudity.
Percy lay back on the pillows and enjoyed the vision of the gradually pinkening curves amidst the steam of the two-foot square glass box. Like Rubens through a filter lens, that was. He was glad that she hadn’t called his bluff and come back to bed, though he would never have admitted it. It had been quite a night; he reviewed what he could remember of its rapidly evolving pleasures.
Lucy took care to cover most of herself with towel before she emerged. She wasn’t going to dress in front of him. That would lead to more erotic grunting and possibly to delays they could ill afford: they were already at the last minute. ‘I’ll get you some toast, if you make yourself respectable.’ She threw on her dressing gown and hurried away to the kitchen.
DS Blake, demure in plain clothes, left first in her bulbous little blue Corsa. DCI Peach, immaculate in a grey suit, drove his Mondeo away a discreet five minutes later. The retired man in the adjoining flat gave him a curious glance as he shut the door of Lucy’s flat. Envy, thought a happy but not entirely objective Percy Peach. He gave the man a sly wink from an otherwise immobile face.
It wouldn’t do to beat his chest and yell his joy out loud.
Peach took DC Pickering with him in search of the man who had assaulted Jenny Pitt. It was by way of reward for the young man’s perceptive gathering of the evidence in Bolton. Of course, he did not tell him that.
At eleven o’clock on a Wednesday morning, a seedy night club is seen at its worst. There was a scent of stale drink in the main rooms and, through the open door of the gents’, the odour of vomit permeated even through the strong disinfectant which was being liberally spread around the floor.
‘We’re not at home to pigs!’ The big man stood just inside the doorway of the club, with his huge hands held awkwardly away from his sides on arms that were a little too long; he looked like an unfriendly gorilla.
‘Surprising, that, when you live in a pigsty.’ Peach, warming to the chase, was past the man’s ritual hostility and peering into the dark and seemingly empty regions behind him.
He strode past the long and now deserted bar, across a small dance floor and the poles where lap dancers pranced during the evenings, noting how shabby the décor looked in even the modicum of daylight afforded to it by the double doors which lay open behind him. He kicked open the door at the back of this main room, and was rewarded by the spectacle of a man hastily removing his feet from the desk inside.
‘Nice of you to show such respect for the arm of the law!’ Peach said pleasantly, as the man half-rose and then slumped back into his chair.
‘I was doing no such thing! Thought for a minute you were Mr Johnson,’ the man protested. He reached out his left hand towards the phone, then thought better of it and folded his arms. You didn’t need to phone the boss, just because the filth were here. Let them know who’s in charge, behave as though you’d nothing to hide, and they couldn’t pin a thing on you, the boss said.
And the boss should know: he was doing very well out of it. Ray Shepherd tried to give himself confidence by thinking how much more successful and well-heeled Joe Johnson was than the stocky little man in the smart grey suit who had just burst into his office.
Peach looked round the office, with its prints of dancers in erotic poses, its photograph of the club as a cinema in the fifties, its big empty desk in front of the leather chair presently occupied by Shepherd. He fastened his eyes on this central figure with genuine contempt. ‘You’ve been beating up women again, Ray. We don’t like that. Don’t like it at all.’
Shepherd leaned back in the boss’s chair and leered up at him, his thin face full of craft and composure. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m sure, DCI Peach.’
He enjoyed getting the rank right, showing the bouncy little pig that they were up to date on his promotion. The fuzz couldn’t pin anything on him, he was sure. Just keep grinning and denying and watch the filth become frustrated. That was the tactic. Joe Johnson had built his empire upon it. And Joe Johnson controlled vice in this town; Joe Johnson now had clubs and casinos in other parts of the north-west and in the Midlands; Joe Johnson lived in a house a Chief Constable could never aspire to; Joe Johnson was a multi-millionaire and the police were plods; Joe Johnson ran this town and would protect his staff. Hold on to that, Ray Shepherd, and annoy them with your smiling.
Peach smiled back at him and said, ‘Keep talking big, Shepherd. Do it in court, if you like. The judge won’t be favourably impressed.’
He seemed very confident, though he couldn’t possibly have any evidence, could he? Like all bullies, Ray Shepherd was shaken when anyone threatened him. He said, ‘I told you, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’
Peach nodded at Gordon Pickering, who said, ‘Young lady by the name of Jenny Pitt. Pretty girl. Or she was until you called in and tried to knock her head off yesterday morning.’
‘Never heard of the girl. You try to prove otherwise.’
Peach smiled at him, like a tiger taking its time over a large and succulent goat. ‘We will, Mr Shepherd. Shouldn’t have let yourself be seen going into that house, should you?’ There were in fact no witnesses to the visit, other than Jenny Pitt herself, but he knew how to undermine men like this. Shepherd was a cut above the ignorant muscle men that Johnson had used on the way up, but Peach saw apprehension in his thin, watchful face, and exulted in it. This wasn’t a formal interview, with the man cautioned and the tape running at the station.
‘Wouldn’t give much for your chances in an ID parade, with your looks – distinctive, I’d say they are, Ray, being a charitable sort of chap. No, when we add an identification to Jenny Pitt’s evidence, I wouldn’t give much for your chances.’
Shepherd would never have made an actor. His unease was tangible. A wiry arm lifted towards his face, then fell back to his side. His tongue flicked over the prominent front teeth to moisten the thin lips. ‘She wouldn’t give evidence. She wouldn’t dare.’
He realized immediately that he had made a mistake. Peach underlined it by his delighted beam, then let the silence stretch for a moment to emphasize his satisfaction. ‘Shows a surprising knowledge of this girl he’s never met, wouldn’t you say, DC Pickering?’
‘Amazing, sir. At least it would be amazing, if we didn’t know perfectly well that he beat her up yesterday morning.’
Shepherd flashed a look of hatred at the fresh-faced young detective. ‘She won’t talk anyway. And that’ll be the end of it,’ he said sullenly. Assurance was ebbing away from him by the second. He inched a hand towards the phone, wishing desperately that he could get the advice of Joe Johnson, then dropped his hand back again to his side.
Peach grinned when he saw the movement. ‘You’re on your own here, Ray Shepherd. Just the same as Jenny Pitt was when you beat her up. That’s the trouble with people like Joe Johnson. They drop you like shit off a red-hot shovel when you’re going down for a long stretch.’
‘I’m not going down, Peach. There isn’t the evidence. You won’t get that Jenny Pitt to go into court.’
‘Her injuries are being photographed at this very moment, Ray. In glorious technicolour. The blues and the greens and the yellows should be at their best on this bright morning – bright for us, anyway. Our chief photographer’s a good lad. He’ll make the most of the bruises on the body, when he prints and develops. And it looks as if you might have broken Jenny’s cheekbone. Shame for her, but it will help the case.’ Percy didn’t mind stretching the truth a fraction, in a good cause like this.
‘You won’t get me for it.’ But the apprehension in the thin face belied the words.
‘It was DC Pickering here who put us on to you in the first place. Bright lad, he is, though I don’t suppose someone like you would give him credit for it.’
Ray Shepherd glanced at Pickering contemptuously. ‘Brains of a pig, I should think he has.’
‘Intelligent animals, pigs. But I don’t expect you’ve read Animal Farm.’ Peach switched suddenly back to business. ‘I’ve already noticed that you’re left-handed, Shepherd. But it was DC Pickering here who worked out that the man who struck Jenny Pitt so hard with the back of his hand had to be left-handed. Smarter than your average cop, isn’t he?’
‘Doesn’t mean it was me, does it? It could have been any—’
‘And then there’s the DNA, of course. Useful new addition, DNA, when we’re dealing with thickos who forget all about it. Almost unfair, it seems sometimes. We could ask you for a sample now, but there’s no real hurry. I think we’ll leave all that to the Forensic boys when you’re safely in custody.’ The DCI smiled happily, even smugly.
His attitude had its effect on Shepherd. They could hear the confidence draining out of his voice as he said, ‘You don’t scare me, Peach. You won’t get a DNA match with me.’
‘You really think not? Well, I’m glad to say that I don’t share your view on that, Mr Shepherd. You broke the skin on that girl’s face with the back of your hand: I’m sure you left a small sample of your estimable self behind. I shall be very surprised if it doesn’t show up in the blood samples DC Pickering collected from the poor girl’s face last night.’
It was news to Gordon Pickering, but he managed a brilliant smile when Shepherd glanced instinctively at him. Peach registered this pleasing reaction without turning towards his DC. Having lured this dangerous fish into the complex meshes of his net, he was looking now for a much bigger catch. ‘So you can look forward to at least an ABH charge, or possibly GBH, when we’ve assessed the injuries. With your record, a conviction for either of them should get you a nice few years inside.’
Now Peach did look at his companion; then he spoke as if they were in conference alone. ‘The question is, DC Pickering, can we now nab this bugger for murder?’
‘I should think it very possible, sir.’
‘I’m glad you agree.’ The two faces turned back in unison to look at the slim man behind the desk, studying him in unblinking silence, as though he were a specimen under a microscope.
The scrutiny was unnerving, even to a man who had endured many police interviews in the past. Ray Shepherd said uncertainly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Peach dropped his smile as swiftly as if it had been a foul smell beneath his nose. ‘Murder, Mr Shepherd. The unlawful killing of Sarah Dunne on the night of Friday, the fourteenth of November.’
‘I didn’t do that. I’ve never killed anyone. You’re barking up the wrong tree there. That would have been . . .’ His voice drained away, seeming to echo a little in the silent room as it went.
Peach’s smile returned slowly, grimly, letting the speaker realize the mistake he had made. ‘Would have been who, Mr Shepherd?’
‘I don’t know who, do I?’
Peach watched him closely, savouring the fear in this man who lived his life by physical violence. Then he said in a low, even voice which made every syllable register, ‘If you want to save your own miserable skin, Shepherd, your only chance is to co-operate absolutely with us. Even someone who has behaved as stupidly as you must see that, surely.’
‘I’m not a grass.’
The sentiment Peach had heard before, a thousand times. The words that even the youthful Gordon Pickering was bored with by now. Peach shrugged. ‘If you want to go down for the maximum, I’ll be happy to arrange it. I don’t like blokes who beat up helpless girls.’
‘You know I can’t grass. You know what Joe Johnson would do to anyone who grassed.’
Peach concealed his excitement, apparently coming near to a yawn before he said, ‘All right, we’ll throw the book at you, if you want to protect one of Johnson’s other palookas. We’d like to have the right man, of course, but so long as we get a murder conviction, it will look just as good on our clear-up rates.’
‘You won’t make murder stick.’ Yet the apprehension which now flooded into his vulpine features said otherwise.
‘Oh, but I think we will, Shepherd. If I were a betting man, I’d estimate us as about five to one on. Of course, the odds might alter dramatically if you gave us a name.’
‘That death was nothing to do with Mr Johnson.’
‘Really? You’ll understand if I treat that view with a certain scepticism.’
‘It was nothing to do with us. I don’t know who killed Sarah Dunne.’
Peach saw denial dropping down the wolfish features like a drawbridge. He said, ‘Indulge me for a moment, Mr Shepherd – you’ll have plenty of time on your hands, where you’re going. So let us speculate. If someone in the Johnson organization had killed her, who might it have been? Assuming for a moment at least that it wasn’t you?’
‘It wasn’t us. Wasn’t any of us.’
Peach nodded slowly. ‘Pity, that. You’re a waste of space, Shepherd, and I’d like to see you put away for as long as possible, so a life sentence won’t worry me. But the purist in me likes to get the right man, when it’s murder. You could call it a weakness in me, and I expect—’
‘Lubbock.’ The tone was so low that it was no more than a mutter.
‘Did you say something, Mr Shepherd?’
‘I said Lubbock. It wasn’t anyone in our set-up who killed her, but if it had been . . .’ His voice trailed away unconvincingly, as if he could not bring himself to repeat the name.
‘If it had been, it might have been Lubbock. I understand. Just hope for your sake that you’re not setting us up.’
Shepherd shook his thin face miserably, unable to produce the words he needed to plead for discretion from them in following up this information.
Peach nodded to Pickering, who stepped forward and pronounced the words of arrest over the man who had been so contemptuous when they had entered the room.
‘You’ll be safe from any Johnson reprisals, where you’re going,’ said Peach sourly.
Father Devoy looked after the finances at St Matthew’s church. It was the biggest Roman Catholic parish in the town, and the turnover was considerable.
On those nights when he put on the blue anorak and ventured out into the town, John Devoy had always taken the fifty pounds out of his own resources, but that was becoming less possible as his visits to the ladies of the streets became more frequent.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, the twenty-sixth of November, Father Devoy was wondering whether to extract fifty pounds from the parish coffers for the first time.
No one would notice. He would simply take fifty pounds in cash from the moneys which had been collected at the weekend masses. The old Canon wouldn’t question it, wouldn’t even consider that the highly regarded and hard-working Father Devoy would be capable of such a thing. The theft, if theft it was, would go undetected.
It was the morality of the gutter: the question was not whether an action was right or wrong, but whether you could do it without being caught. He had always despised that stance, had even preached from the pulpit against it. John Devoy could scarcely believe that he had now sunk so low.
He was losing control of himself and his actions. He despised himself, but he despised also those Jezebels who were leading him on to his destruction. He’d warned that girl on Monday night of the evil she was doing, told her that she was destroying herself and the weak-willed men she led astray. But she hadn’t paid any heed to him. Probably she’d laughed at him, when he’d gone away. Perhaps she’d even told her friends about him. Those friends with the short skirts and soft, supple, accessible bodies. Perhaps they’d all laughed at him together.
He didn’t fight the urge to go out after them at nights any more, not the way he used to fight it. That was because he knew now when he began to wrestle with his conscience what the outcome would be. He would go in the end. And once you knew what the outcome of your inner turmoil was going to be, it made the argument much shorter. The days when he had prostrated himself before the Blessed Sacrament in the empty church and prayed for the strength to resist seemed suddenly to be a long way behind him, to belong to a different world.
Thoughts raced through his mind in rapid, feverish succession. Contradictory thoughts. Sometimes he saw himself as a lost soul, consigned to Hell by the deadly sin of Lust. Then this picture was subsumed into that of the missionary bringing salvation to those lost souls who paraded in the streets and sold their bodies to weak and fallible men.
There was a third image, one which his troubled brain identified vaguely with the Old Testament. What happened if the women failed to heed that message, if they treated the word of the Lord with contempt, as that girl had on Monday night? Divine retribution would surely fall upon them. Perhaps it was to be John Devoy in his torment who was to be the instrument of that retribution. It seemed that these women were failing to heed the lesson of the girl among their number who had been struck down twelve days ago. They had been back on the streets within days, sinning themselves, and also offering their bodies as the occasion of sin in others.
Father Devoy slipped the fifty pounds into the pocket of his trousers.