[Inspector Peach 05] - The Lancashire Leopard Page 10

  And then, with a little assistance, the gossamer was gone. It was a moment or two later that he said, “You now have it in your hands to make an old man very happy, my dear!”

  So she did. And he was.

  It was twenty minutes later that she said, “Were you serious about Tucker wanting to promote you?”

  He started out of his warm, honeyed drowsiness. “Bloody ’ell, Norah! If you’re going to bring him into bed, you could at least give me warning!”

  “If you persuade Tommy Bloody Tucker to promote you, after the way you treat him, it will be a greater feat than getting me into bed with you.”

  “But infinitely less pleasurable. Let’s talk about your bottom. I need a cerebral exchange.” His active right hand sought an introduction to the debate.

  “Let’s talk about Tommy Bloody Tucker. That should cool your ardour and keep your ancient pulse in check.”

  “It’ll certainly do that, girl. All right. And I didn’t say Tucker wanted to promote me. I’ve not gone that daft. And neither has he.”

  She sighed, stretching her toes luxuriously towards the foot of the bed, while imprisoning that wandering right hand firmly in both of hers. “So tell me exactly what he said.”

  “I couldn’t do that. I’ve got better things to do. But the gist of it was that he was hoping to make Chief Super for himself.”

  “That’s bloody ridiculous! Everyone knows how you carry his section on your back! How can anyone ever think of promoting someone like Tucker?”

  Percy enjoyed her righteous indignation on his behalf almost as much as the more overt demonstration of her affections she had just given him. She quivered with indignation against his thigh as she spoke, and he wished he could prolong that sensation indefinitely. Instead, he said, “It’s the way the world works, love. His CID section has had a certain success, so they look to promote the man at the helm.”

  “Except that he’s not. Not really. He’s no idea what’s going on, most of the time. Anyway, from what you said, he’s at least had the decency to insist that your contribution should be recognised.”

  “Oh, how little you understand of the wicked ways of the world, my pretty! I’m willing to teach you a little more though, if you’ll just—”

  “No. Keep your hands still and your mind on the tale you’re telling!” She pressed her nails firmly into his wrist to emphasise her point.

  “Oooh, I do love you when you’re masterful, lass! I never saw much in this bondage before, but if that’s what you’re into, I’m quite willing to—”

  “Tucker! Or I’ll throw you out of this bed!”

  “Oh, all right. My reading of the situation is that someone has realised quite well who does the work and perhaps even what a prat Thomas Bulstrode Tucker is. Perhaps it’s even the Chief Constable — Tucker claimed he’d commended me to the CC, which in Tucker-speak means that the CC has spoken favourably of me to him and he has claimed the credit for his department. He’s trying to engineer a promotion for himself, but he realises he can’t do it without recommending me for Chief Inspector.”

  “So you think that if Tucker wants to become Detective Chief Super, he’ll have to see you made a DCI?”

  “Precisely. So it’s not on.”

  “What’s not on?”

  “Promotion for me. Not if it means that that jumped-up git is going to strut about as a Chief Super. I’ll give him a message about where the monkeys put their nuts. With precise instructions.”

  She thought for a moment. He was full of surprises, this lover of hers, even now. “You can’t do that. You deserve to be promoted. Everyone knows where the successes of Brunton CID have come from.”

  “Maybe. But I’m happy where I am. I never wanted to go further than Inspector. And certainly not if it means that twerp clambering further up the ladder.”

  She was silent for a moment. “It won’t work, Percy. You’re the one who’s always telling me I’m not cynical enough about the system. Well, try this for size: the system is bound to recognise the success of a small CID section like Brunton’s with a promotion for its chief. You said yourself, that’s the way the world works. So Tucker will get promoted anyway, and someone will become Chief Inspector as a result. Someone more obsequious and less deserving than Percy Peach. He wants you because he depends upon you for his results, but he’ll take someone more comfortable if you let him.”

  He considered what she had said. She was correct, of course. Sometimes you were too close to a situation to see it objectively. He said reluctantly, “You could be right, I suppose.”

  She snuggled a little nearer. “I am. You know I am. Thank you for telling me about it.”

  “It was very boring. I feel I deserve some reward for it. Sort of tit for tat, as you might say!” And with a swift and accurate movement, he secured an ample breast in his left hand. Very ambidextrous, was Percy. Noted for it, in his cricketing days.

  It was Lucy’s turn to feign surprise. “Oooh, DI Peach, you’re full of surprises! If I’m not careful, you’ll be asking for second helpings!”

  So she wasn’t. And he did.

  *

  Monday, January 28th

  Terry Plant had proved an elusive quarry. The hunt for him had been stepped up after DS Blake and DC Pickard had interviewed his ex-wife Debbie, but no one had been able to find him.

  He had left the house where residence was provided for newly released prisoners after no more than ten days, removing his meagre possessions from his room without any notice to the manager who ran the place on behalf of the charitable trust. It was by no means unusual that he should disappear like this without leaving a forwarding address. Indeed, it followed a depressing pattern for men of his background, who disappeared swiftly rather than pay the maintenance that was required of them for an estranged wife and children.

  No one deployed many resources to find him until the hunt was stepped up for the man now known as the Lancashire Leopard. Plant was by no means a leading suspect: there was nothing to connect him directly with any of the three killings. But then there was nothing to connect any individual directly with them yet: the Leopard had left too little of himself behind at any of the murder sites.

  But Plant needed to be investigated. He had a history of violence, which according to his wife was not sexually related, and the killings had all taken place in the four months since he had been released from Strangeways. And enquiries now showed that Plant had been in the East Lancashire area at the time. He had been back to the street of his former married residence a week before the first of the killings, trying unsuccessfully to find out where his wife had gone. And he had been sighted in Brunton three days before the death of Hannah Woodgate.

  But the police machine failed to locate him. The dubious people who were his known associates before his three years in prison either hadn’t seen him, or weren’t admitting to it. It began to look as if he had now left the area. Then, in a situation that bordered on farce, he made a present of himself to his hunters.

  The building society raid he and his fellows tried to commit failed because it was badly researched, badly planned, and badly staffed. An impressive trio of deficiencies in any crime.

  At 08.20 on a grey and blustery Monday morning, Terry Plant and his companion appeared behind the woman who had come to open the door of the Burnley Building Society branch in the centre of Preston and hustled her within the premises. With threats of what would happen if she made a sound, they shut the door behind them and prepared to rob the place at leisure.

  So far so good. The plan at least had the virtue of simplicity. But things went wrong from this point on. For a start, the woman they had ambushed was almost hysterical with fear at the sight of the baseball bat Plant produced to threaten her and the toy gun brandished by his companion.

  She was meant to lead them to the strongroom and provide them with the keys. Initially unable to speak with fear, she was eventually able to convey two vital facts: first, that there was very little cash in the
strongroom anyway at the start of a week, and second that she did not have access to the keys and did not know where they were kept. Their increasing threats were counter-productive. She fell prostrate at their feet and wept for mercy from her captors.

  Moreover, their plan depended on the fact that they had entered the place unnoticed save for the woman now proving so unhelpful. They did not know it, but this too had been bungled. A man rearranging the engagement rings behind the grilled window of the jeweller’s across the street had noticed the two men with a suitcase, lingering suspiciously long outside the window of the bakery higher up the street, and watched as they bundled poor Mrs Shorrock through the door of the Burnley Building Society. When he saw the door shut behind the trio, he crept back into his shop and dialled 999.

  The farce was completed by the third man in the conspiracy, the driver who was to whisk them swiftly away from the scene of the crime with their booty. He had stolen the vehicle from a pub car park after midnight. There was little risk of it being reported yet: punters who had a drop too many and left their cars rarely returned to collect them before nine o’clock on the next day. So far so good.

  But the crime depended on a slick timing which proved beyond the skills of the trio involved. The driver was supposed to cruise down the street of the building society branch, pick up his colleagues as they emerged from the door with their takings, and drive swiftly away to Fulwood, where the stolen car would be abandoned and they would transfer to their Mondeo and be away down the M6. A doddle. In planning.

  But not in execution. When the driver arrived on the dot of the prearranged time of 08.27, there was no sign of his companions. It must be taking them longer to get into the strongroom and fill the suitcase than they had anticipated. Plan B: drive round the block, wait briefly, return exactly five minutes later. 08.32. He was there, bang on time, again. But as he cruised cautiously down the street, he saw the two police cars, one on each side of his rendezvous point.

  He kept his head, stared resolutely straight ahead, moved slowly past the fuzz, accelerated cautiously away to Fulwood and to freedom. He was the only one of the trio to escape with his liberty.

  Terry Plant and his companion came like battery chickens to their doom. Having achieved nothing within the building, they stuck their heads cautiously out to look for their driver and means of escape. They were promptly arrested. The man with the toy Armalite rifle dropped it as he was bidden, but Terry Plant made an ill-advised attempt to use his baseball bat on the armed police who were shouting the words of arrest into his face. Assault on a police officer and resisting arrest would be added to his other charges.

  And he would now be investigated thoroughly as a possible Lancashire Leopard.

  Eleven

  Monday, January 28th

  It was a situation tailored for the skills of Percy Peach. Two blokes brawling, with a knife involved. One, possibly two, on drugs. So much drink and noise at the party that the police had been called to restore order, twenty minutes after midnight. One in hospital, two arrested.

  And now, in the cold light of this late January morning, it had got even better. Two youngish single men caught red-handed in violence; who lived alone in the area; who had provided blood samples; who must be outside suspects for the Lancashire Leopard case which was bringing increasingly hostile headlines to the police; who must thus be thoroughly examined while they were under lock and key.

  And it seemed to Peach that it could only get better still. Two men softened by a night’s stay in the cells and a police-station breakfast. Two men feeling forlorn and foolish after a night spent in solitary confinement, reviewing their situation. Two men who had been foolish enough to refuse legal representation for their interviews. Two men who were now in separate interview rooms, each wondering what the other was saying to the police.

  And passing between them, increasing the flood of panic like a frenzied Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Detective Inspector Percy Peach.

  Peach decided to see the black boy first. He arrived in the room with a sorrowful “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!”, set the tape recorder running, named himself and DC Brendan Murphy to the microphone, all without taking his eyes off the stony black face of Clyde Northcott.

  He studied his quarry for a moment and said, “In a lot of trouble, aren’t you, Mr Northcott? Standing over a defenceless man with a knife at his throat. Lucky our lads got there when they did, I’d say, or you could have been facing a murder rap this morning.” He looked as if he was disappointed that this was not the case.

  “I didn’t start it,” said Clyde carefully. You had to watch your step with this lot. Perhaps he should have taken the brief when it was offered, but it had seemed at the time as though that would be an admission of guilt.

  “Really? Well, it’s up to you what you say of course. We’ll come to that later. You’ve got a lot of fences to jump before you get there. Drugs, for instance. Using and supplying. Blood sample full of crack.” Peach looked at the notes on the blood test in front of him, whistled silently, then shook his head sadly.

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Cocaine rocks, was it? Mix it with the baking powder yourself, do you, or is it supplied to you wholesale?”

  “I don’t mix my own. I had one rock at the beginning of the evening, that’s all.”

  “That’s all, he says, DC Murphy. Dangerous attitude that.”

  “Yes, sir. Riding for a fall, I’d say. Probably astride a powerful motorcycle under the influence of drugs, in fact, at the beginning of the evening. Very lucky he wasn’t stopped.”

  This tall DC with the curly brown hair and the soft brown eyes seemed as bad as the inspector, thought Clyde desperately. He’d been prepared for the tough cop/friendly cop routine. No sign of that here. It looked as if both of these sods were going to be tough. He said, “The only coke rocks I had were for my own use. I take one occasionally at the beginning of an evening. I don’t supply.”

  Peach turned sideways to look at Brendan Murphy and gave his DC a broad grin. “This lad thinks we fell off a Christmas tree.” The idea seemed to give him great amusement as he turned back to the anxious black face. “What about the rock you had in the pocket of your motorcycle leathers? The only one you hadn’t managed to dispose of during the evening, was it?”

  Clyde’s heart sank away towards his feet and he felt his palms damp with a cold sweat. He’d forgotten altogether about that single rock he kept in the leathers as a spare against emergencies. It had seemed a sensible precaution at the time; now he could not understand why he had ever risked anything so dangerous. “I...I know it looks bad but—”

  “Bad? It looks bloody awful, lad. Makes me almost sorry for you. But not quite. How much crack did you sell during the evening? Quite a lot, I should think, in a gathering like that.”

  “I didn’t sell any!” Clyde heard his voice rising, tried to control his breathing but couldn’t. “I told you, I’m a user, not a supplier. That was just a spare I keep there for my own use. I’m a fool, but not a seller!” His words came in quick, uncontrolled bursts as his breath gusted out unevenly. As a result of this delivery, the phrases sounded unconvincing, even to himself.

  “‘A fool, but not a seller’. Well, the first part of that’s certainly right.” Peach leaned forward, fastening the dark-brown eyes with his own black pupils from no more than three feet. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Mr Northcott. I’m going to go away and talk to another naughty boy now. Give you time to think about your position. To think about what you’re going to tell us. Mug of police tea, if you’re a good lad. Two mugs, if you’re a bad one.”

  He left with a laugh which sounded to Clyde Northcott much more like a snarl.

  *

  Paul Dutton, the man Northcott knew only as National Front, had felt his confidence seeping away in the ten hours he had spent waiting to be questioned. He told himself that the police had the same sympathies as he had; that they saw enough of what the blacks and the Pakis were doing to the
country to sympathise; that they would accept his version of events and have a quiet laugh about it afterwards as they put the nigger away.

  In the small hours, with the drink inside him still helping, he had been confident of it. Shivering in his cell in the bleak grey light of morning, it had seemed less certain. He wished now that he’d got the legal bloke who attended their NF meetings to come and speak for him — but the bloke wasn’t fully qualified yet, anyway, so they might not have allowed him. He remembered his advice anyway. Take a line and stick to it. Let them try to disprove your story, if they want to.

  In these circumstances, they surely wouldn’t want to. Lucky for him the bloke had been a Sambo, really.

  Peach viewed the massive figure with a distaste he did not trouble to conceal as he set the recorder going and announced that the interview with Paul Dutton would be conducted by DI Peach and DC Pickard. He paused for a moment, letting his eyes run over the heavy forearms and the florid, truculent face. Then he said, “Well, Mr Dutton. Landed yourself in a lot of trouble, haven’t you? Let’s hear what you have to say for yourself.”

  “I shouldn’t be here at all. The nigger pulled a knife on me!”

  “Going for wrongful arrest, are you? Well, that should be interesting. Pity you didn’t ask for a brief, though — doubt if he’d have advised that.”

  Dutton looked from one to the other. Tony Pickard’s white face looked as blank and unrevealing beneath its neat black hair as Peach’s was happily mobile. Paul leaned forward, spoke as confidentially as he was able. “Look, you know what they’re like as well as I do. The nigger should never have been there. He was trouble all night, was Sambo.”

  Peach looked at Pickard. “Be able to add racial abuse to causing an affray, by the looks of things. And we’ve hardly started yet. Good thing we’ve got plenty of charge sheets.” He turned back to Dutton. “Perhaps that’s where you’d better begin your story, sunshine. Much further back in the evening.”