twenty-four

marty-mac

“Could I have a word?”

“Pippa?”

The woman was standing, like the police officer she was, respectfully outside the porch-way. My voice sounded hollow within it. She put out her hand and I shook it. It was cool and steady.

“Could I come in, please?”

“Er …”

“It’s official, I’m afraid.”

“What?”

“I need to ask you some questions. I’ll only take a few moments of your time.”

That was what the police said, wasn’t it, when actually they had brought handcuffs and a search warrant.

I took her into the therapy room. I’d done an aromatherapy massage after Laura had left, so it smelt of lavender and chamomile. We sat at the desk, as I would with a client. She didn’t have anything on her; no notebook or recorder. She sat comfortably back in the wicker chair and crossed her legs, which today were hidden under a pair of pinstriped suit trousers with a sharp crease. Her blouse was off-white, open-necked but buttoned high, with short sleeves as a nod to the weather. She’d left the jacket in the car, perhaps. Her hair—that glorious tumble of penny-bright curls—had been slicked into a tight bun. She looked the biz. She looked scary.

“I need to ask you about your movements on Saturday the eighth of July.”

“What?” I gave myself a shake. “I’m sorry?”

“Last weekend. Where were you on the afternoon and evening of Saturday?”

“You think I did something wrong?”

“Of course not, Sabbie.” She offered her professional smile. “If you could answer the question, please.”

“Er … well, as always I was at the Curate’s Egg from sixish onwards. I usually get home about quarter to midnight.” An image came into my head; the phone call from Lettice.

“Oh, goddess! Oh, no!”

“Yes?”

“Is this about my grandmother? Lady Savile-Dare? Has she died, is that it?”

Pippa’s head went back, as if she’d braked at speed. I’d thrown her. “I don’t know about your grandmother, I’m afraid. I’m here about Martin Macaskill.”

“Who?”

“You might know this person as Marty-Mac.”

For no good reason, my heart clunked into a faster rhythm. “I do know him as that. He’s been bothering me. Is that what you want to talk about?”

“Can I establish that you had contact with Martin Macaskill on Saturday, July eighth?”

“Contact?” It felt like the wrong word. Like Marty-Mac and I had trumped up some plan together.

“Where were you when you saw Macaskill?”

“In the Angel Shopping Centre. Well, no—in the car park. He gave me the jitters and I ran off. He followed me into the café.”

“What time was this?”

“Sort of two-ish. Yes, because I was late for an appointment …” I trailed off.

“Can you recall your conversation with Martin Macaskill?”

“Er …” I hesitated. Marty had talked a lot about Rey. Rey was Pippa’s boss. I didn’t think it would be good to discuss this behind his back. I was quickly deciding not to say anything that Pippa didn’t drag out of me.

She closed her eyes, a slow blink, as if forcing herself to have patience. “Anything at all, Sabbie.”

“He had my business card. And he’d found me on Facebook. He scared me, a bit.”

“So what happened in the end?”

“He went.”

“You asked him to go and he complied.”

“If you like.”

She recrossed her legs. “I don’t like, Sabbie. Because that afternoon the station had a call from the Angel Café to report there had been an altercation within the premises. An officer took a statement. So we know a third party was involved.”

“Marty didn’t touch him. Not at all.”

“Him? That would have been Reynard Buckley?”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“Would you make a statement to that affect?”

“Pippa! It was just a friend who was passing. Will you please tell me why—”

“Can I have the friend’s name, please.”

“Eh?”

She pulled her iPhone out of her trouser pocket. No wonder she didn’t carry a notebook. She held it in readiness.

“Justin Webber,” I said, on my out-breath. “Known as Juke. He works at the Agency for Change, near the river, above the Polska Café. It’s a small charity that supports displaced persons.”

“Did you see Martin Macaskill at any time after that?”

“No, I didn’t. I haven’t. I’m glad to say he’s left me alone.”

Pippa lay the phone on her lap. “Have you spoken to Reynard Buckley since that time?

My heart flapped wildly. “We’re both busy people, you know? I … I don’t recall discussing Marty.” That was what politicians said, when they wanted to lie. I don’t recall. I hoped Pippa hadn’t noticed. “I thought it was over.”

“Can you clarify what you thought was over?”

“Nothing.” I trailed off. “What d’you mean, Reynard Buckley? Like, you don’t know I’m his girlfriend?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give that impression.” An irritated smile flashed across her face. “Please go on.”

“You need to tell me why you’re here, Pippa.”

She sighed. She shifted again, uncrossing her legs and placing her neat almond toes together on the laminate flooring. “Martin Macaskill was found on Saturday evening at just after seven. Dead.”

“I’m … uh? Sorry? Dead?”

“He was found in a garden on Brendon Way, where he had been living with his mother, since being arrested, charged, and released on bail.”

She sounded so sure. Like the information was already imbedded in her memory. “How did he die?”

“Blunt weapon injury. I can’t reveal more than that, Sabbie, at this time.”

“Rey has asked you to question me about this?”

She favoured me with her professional version of a smile. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, if he’s heading up this investigation—”

“He’s not heading it up. I’m reporting directly to Chief Inspector Horton.” She stopped short and looked at her phone screen, although I could see that she wasn’t reading anything. She was buying herself some time. I felt my forehead wrinkle into a frown. Why would Pippa ever need time to think? “Rey is a suspect, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be stupid!”

“You didn’t know.” I felt, rather than saw, the sympathy in her eyes. She was sorry for me. I gripped the wicker chair, locked into position, unable to move. “You did know that Reynard … Rey … has been suspended?” she asked.

“Suspended? From duty?”

“I’m sorry to be the one to break the news.” She tried another smile. It was cracking her lips.

“That’s nuts. That’s a lie.”

“Reynard Buckley was suspended two weeks ago, on suspicion of becoming personally involved with a case of corruption and theft.”

“Stop calling him Reynard Buckley!”

I’d raised my voice, but she didn’t respond to that. “I’d no idea I’d be bringing you this news. It must be hard for you.”

“Piss off, Pippa.”

She processed that, filing it away. “You understand that if you hadn’t been approached by Martin Macaskill, I wouldn’t be here. We found Macaskill’s phone on his body. He had entered your telephone number into his contacts. You were also a match with the description the café staff gave us.” She looked delighted with her good police work.

“Whatever you think Rey has done, he hasn’t done this. He’s as incorruptible as a …” I trailed off. Rey was incorruptible. But he had been angry when I’d seen him in the Egg. And by that time, Marty-Mac was dead.

“It was noted and recorded that Rey had dealings with Martin Macaskill, who was sourcing unpaid items within his previous working environment. It is possible Rey had become involved with the … with what was going on.”

I looked at her. It was the first time Pippa Chaisey had been the least bit vague. “So, what was going on?”

“We are still investigating that.”

“You mean you are.”

“Yes. I am.”

“Bit of a leg up for you, this, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve only just become a DS, haven’t you? Rey was years a DS before he got his promotion.”

“I don’t think that’s any concern of yours. If you must know, I’m fast-tracked.”

“You’re what?”

“Fast-tracked. I’m a university graduate.”

“Oh, please. Let me congratulate you. You’re one of millions.”

“Not in the police force.”

“And you think that gives you the right to go snooping around my boyfriend, who has served the Avon and Somerset Constabulary meticulously for over twenty years?”

“This time isn’t the first time, Sabbie.” The compassionate tone was back in her voice. “Even before I arrived at Bridgwater, there had been some dodgy business with Rey Buckley. In fact, it was station gossip. A station joke, if you like.” She shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Six months ago, he took part in some sort of sting.” She paused. “Beg pardon, you probably don’t know what a sting is—”

“Any fool knows what a sting is. Rey’s not like that. He wouldn’t do that. His methods got results. All his results are good. They led to his promotion.”

“Really? If you like. All I know is what I heard around the station, which, of course, I had to pass onto my superior.”

“Your superior is Rey.”

“Not when a colleague has legitimate suspicions. I had to report what I’d found to be the truth. Reynard Buckley had taken a uniformed officer into a municipal car park late in the evening and involved him in a private affair. He proceeded to accost a family as they were about to leave in their car. To achieve this, it is a possibility that he had previously smashed the back lights of the car involved. He did this, apparently, as a favour to a mate.”

She gave me a look that was so satisfied, so triumphant, I had to dig my fingers into the woven cane of the chair to stop myself from lunging at her. I wondered if she knew everything. Did she know I had been there, in that car park? That I was the “mate” in question? Did she know Rey had smashed the lights to help me rescue someone from dreadful captivity? Did she have any idea how good a man Rey was?

“Because of this small thing, he’s been suspended from duty?”

“Reynard Buckley is prone to acts that are outside the professional conduct of an officer of the law. This time, it’s far worse that just a smashed light, I’m afraid.”

I wanted to tell her to stop calling Rey by his full name again, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t speak at all.

I dialled Juke’s number as I ran around the house, collecting my bag, finding my car keys. “Juke—sorry, but something’s come up I need to tell you about—”

“Is it Marty-Mac?” I heard Juke ask.

“He’s dead, Juke! He’s been killed.”

“Oh God. How d’you know?”

“The police have been here—”

“Oh hell.”

“It happened on Saturday after we saw him.”

“Oh shit!”

“They already knew the three of us were at the café.”

“How? How did they know that Sabbie?”

“Okay, Juke, calm down.”

“I’m sorry; sorry. It’s just so awful.”

“I’m afraid they might come and interview you.”

“Oh hell! Not here at work I hope!”

“Maybe usurp them by going into the station to give a statement.”

“Yeah. Good thinking. What did you tell them, Sabbie?”

That made me stop. I was halfway to the door. I slashed my hand across my eyes. “The truth, of course.”

“Right.”

“You didn’t touch him.”

“No. No! I didn’t.”

“Tell it like it was, Juke, because the staff reported the incident to the police.”

Juke sighed. “I could do without this, Sabbie.”

“Yes. My fault. I got you involved. Unnecessarily.”

“No … no, I was pleased to help …”

“Go and make that statement. Tell them I’ve rung you. I know how cops’ brains work, and this will only look good for you.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you didn’t kill him.”

“Yeah. No. Nothing to worry about.”

I cut us off and sprinted to the Vauxhall. I swung out of my street and tried to keep my speed down as I cleared the estate and crossed the River Parrett. I couldn’t get Pippa Chaisey out of my mind. I had thought she was a threat to my relationship with Rey. Turned out, she was a threat to Rey himself. And how was I going to break it to him—that I knew? An entire fortnight had passed with him suspended from work, pretending to me that he’d been so busy he couldn’t even see me. I’d thought he was going off me. Now I knew that he hadn’t been able to face me.

The nineteenth-century terrace of houses loomed as I came to a halt, one wheel on the pavement. Most of these houses were now divided into flats. Rey’s quarters were so tiny they could not be described as anything more than a bedsit, but I knew that he was crippled by keeping up repayments on a house he owned but didn’t live in; the house of his marriage. I pushed at the front door. It was usually left unlocked, so the inhabitants could come and go, locking their own doors independently. I took the stairs, flying round the turns. I couldn’t stop myself from crying out, as I got to his floor.

“Rey! REY!”

“Sabbie?”

Rey was standing there. He hadn’t shaved. He was wearing lounge pants and a t-shirt. I saw his unmade bed, duvet rumpled and pillows flattened. I realized this was his sleeping attire, something I didn’t often get a look at. His expression wasn’t entirely shock; there was some guilt there too.

“I’m a bit … er … yeah, off work with some sort of virus … best not get too close.” He wasn’t making much attempt to lie convincingly, perhaps because he’d been caught so far off-guard.

“Man flu, is it?”

“If you like.”

“Rey, you never take a day off.”

“Been a crackdown on bugs. They force us to work from home, now. I don’t want you catching it.”

“Women can’t get man flu.”

“I’m sorry you’ve … found me like this. I look shit.”

“Nah … I like you in bedtime gear and stubble. Sexy.”

He regarded me, taking in my words, not breaking into a smile. His eyes were bleary.

“I need to sit down, Rey. If I don’t, I’ll drop, I swear it.”

By the cold radiator was Rey’s single comfy chair, piled with open files. I lifted them from the seat, trying not to disrupt things.

“Yeah—just—on the floor is good.”

“What are you working on?”

“It’s nothing.”

He looked done in … sucked dry. For the first time, I realized that I could sometimes be the stronger one in our relationship.

“I have to talk to you about Marty-Mac.”

“What?” Rey was instantly on alert.

“I’ve been worrying about it all, Rey.”

“Marty-Mac won’t be bothering you anymore. He’s dead.”

“You’re … glad he’s dead.”

“No, don’t get me wrong—”

“You wanted him dead.”

He took three steps and was across the small room. “’Course I didn’t want him fucking dead.”

“Swearing won’t help, Rey.”

“I’m a law enforcement officer. I protect the innocent.”

“Marty wasn’t exactly innocent, was he?”

I let the moments tick on. Surely he trusted me enough to tell me what was going on. Surely if there was one person he might confide in, it would be me. As you would confide in your partner. But we weren’t partners. I was his girlfriend, a girlfriend, someone to meet in a pub and take home for a hump in the hay. Not someone to confide in.

I wondered if his wife knew. Had he told Lesley of his suspension? Had she come round to clean the bedsit and found him in bed late into the morning?

“You think I got him killed,” said Rey. “It’s my fault? You think that?”

“How could I think that? I don’t even know your connection to the man.”

“Yeah you do. I said. We knew each other at school. I knew lots of people at school. Most of Bridgwater and surrounds. I’ve never been friends with Marty-Mac, but no one is listening.”

His hands brushed the arm of the chair I was in, as if afraid to touch me. I so longed for him say it, get it out in the open. I am under suspicion for his murder. I snatched at his hands and held them tight. “What you’ve got to do, is work out who killed him.”

“Yeah.” He tried a grin. “Not a difficult case, for God’s sake. Mac had friends who would quickly change to enemies. Who would happily get someone to go at him with a bit of house brick, if the circumstances allowed. I don’t know why they can’t see that.”

“They?”

He stared at me for almost a full minute.

“Rey,” I repeated. “Who are ‘they’?”

He snatched his hands from mine and turned on his heel. I think I made a sort of sound, not a word, not, “please” or “no, don’t go”, but rather, a wail of distress, knowing he’d rather walk away than tell me. He swung away into the kitchen area of the bedsit. It was not anger. He’d walked away from me in shame.

He reached into a wall cupboard and drew out a beer, flipped off the top and took a swig from the neck. “You can tell me,” I said, without moving. “Unload whatever there is to unload. I love you.”

That unnerved him. I’d told him I loved him before, several times—I knew because I was keeping count—but he never responded. He didn’t seem to be able to say “I love you” back. Didn’t mean he didn’t love me.

There was a pause that grew and grew.

Finally, Rey put his beer down, quite gently, and drew himself up, as if this was the superintendent’s office and he had been called there to give his account.

“Marty-Mac has been a petty criminal from—well, from early days, I suspect. He’d been in prison a couple of times, and from what I can make out he didn’t like the experience. He’s weak, a loser, the sort that always comes under the heel of someone else. Prison would be hell for him. He came out the second time and tried to go straight. He got this job on a building site. Something with a county council connection—the firm who got the tender for the work had given the mother of cheap quotes. Stupid. Cheap tenders always attract the cowboys and criminal elements.”

“Marty-Mac was the criminal element?”

“Not at all. He’s trying his utmost to go straight, right? Do a bit of roofing, a bit of bricklaying, that sort of thing. It’s not easy to go straight for an ex-con. The only people who will think of employing you are people who want something from you.”

I got up. It was silly to carry on this conversation with metres of space between us. I went over to him and slid my hands around the waist band of his lounge pants. “What did they want with Marty?”

“A factotum, I think. A runner, a driver, that sort of thing. A go-between. Years back—ten, fifteen years back, before he did his first stretch—Marty had been my man. My snout; my informer. In those days, we’d do things on the quiet. Just a word, just a fiver passed over for beer money. Now, things have changed. We have to document the lot; there’s a fund we use to pay informers. Informants, they’re called.” He lay his cheek against mine and I felt the dry chuckle in his throat. “They’re still snouts and grasses, of course.”

I’d been holding my breath. I let it out with my words. “You did it on the quiet.”

“Yeah. Just this once. He knew materials were being passed into the worksite which were poor in quality—dangerous in quality—and that certain officials had enabled this to happen. He came to tell me and I started asking round. That was a bad move.”

“You had no written records?”

“No proof of evidence obtained. Only the tip-off from Marty, who is not my documented informant.”

“It seems so insignificant.”

“We’re talking major investment. People with a lot of money looking to make further killings. If they didn’t like how I was asking my questions, it would be relatively simple to get me out their way.”

“If you were easy to remove, how much easier would Marty-
Mac be?”

“Trouble is, I don’t have an alibi, not for early evening Saturday. And I do have the means, motive, and—”

“Opportunity.” I’d watched the crime series. I knew that didn’t make him guilty. “Can’t the powers that be at the station see that you’d be the last person to want him out of the way?”

“Apparently not. And although it looked like a random attack, there were a lot of wounds.”

“A lot of wounds?”

“Yeah. Extremely vicious.”

“The Green Knight has been taken down.” I could barely hear myself over the buzzing in my ears as I thought about Morgan le Fay. “And others will perish likewise’.”

“What’re you on about?”

I shook my head, thinking how Marty-Mac was beaten to the ground with a bit of brick. Gerald Evens had been attacked with a paving stone. Not a mugging, I was thinking—it was clear Gerald wouldn’t have money on him.

I looked up. “Marty-Mac wasn’t mugged. He still had his phone.”

“How do you know that?”

“Pippa let it out.”

“You’ve seen her?”

“She thought she’d get something from me. She was wrong. She’s brutal, Rey. Ruthless. The sort of stickler who has to do everything by the book. She wants your job.”

I heard him swallow hard. Silent moments passed, then I felt his chest shake. So tight was it to mine, that I shook with it. He was crying, keeping the silent wracked sobs inside him in the hope I’d never know.

I clamped him to me and hung on. My eyes stayed dry. I felt steely. I was prepared to fight to the death for my man. I was prepared to scratch the bitch’s eyes out.