[Inspector Peach 05] - The Lancashire Leopard Read online

Perhaps they were just going through the motions. Perhaps they thought just the same about the nignogs as he did. Perhaps when he gave them the details Sambo would be for the high jump. He’d better make it convincing — that would be a help to them as well as to him. “I told you the nigger was causing trouble all night. He was dancing with Mark’s girl, Tracey. Had his tongue down her throat and her knickers half off, apparently.”

  “Apparently? You didn’t see this yourself, then?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Pity about that. Be better if you’d at least been there, if you want to argue with what other people said.”

  “Listen, if you’re going to take any notice of what the nigger says—”

  “If you mean Mr Northcott, we haven’t even asked him for his version of this yet. But do carry on with your story, Mr Dutton.” Peach looked quite eager, as if he had a lively taste in fiction.

  “Well, Mark warned him to stay away, but he didn’t.”

  “So you attacked him. Tried to beat him up. Bit off rather more than you could chew, though, as it turned out.”

  “No! It wasn’t like that at all!”

  “Really? Tell us how you think it was, then.”

  Paul summoned all his meagre resources to try to make it convincing. “We were getting ready to leave when—”

  “We? Just who does that mean, Mr Dutton?”

  “Me and Mark Foster and Jack Cox.”

  “Three to one. I see.”

  “No! The nigger had others with him,” Dutton said desperately. “They set on us. And the nigger pulled a blade!”

  “I see. But he didn’t try to use it. Curious, that.”

  “Eh? What d ’you mean, he didn’t use it?”

  Peach slid a sheet out from the sheaf in front of him. “Mark Foster has a broken nose and a tooth less than he had yesterday. The doctor who examined you last night has recorded bruising to your upper thigh and left side and a shallow graze on your upper left cheek...from which, incidentally, we took a blood sample. No sign of knife wounds.”

  “So? The nigger was putting himself about a bit. He’s probably used to it, the trouble he causes.”

  Tony Pickard said, “More used to it than you, Paul? You’re the one with the previous record, after all. Won’t help you much, when it comes to sentence, a previous caution for assault.”

  Dutton said in a voice suddenly bereft of all conviction, “There won’t be any sentence. Not for me, ‘cause I’m not guilty, see? I told you, Sambo came at us with a knife. Assault with intent to cause serious—”

  “But he didn’t, did he, Mr Dutton?” Peach’s patience was running dangerously thin. “I’ve just read out the list of injuries to you. None of them caused by a knife. None of them could conceivably have been caused by a knife.”

  “I tell you, he pulled a knife. Whatever else happened, he pulled a knife. The nigger. Your blokes found him with it in his hand. He was threatening me when they arrived.”

  Peach studied him for a few seconds, in which the sound of Dutton’s uneven breathing seemed unnaturally loud in the claustrophobic room. Then he said, “Maybe. It’s how you all arrived at that situation that interests me. Mr Dutton, I’m going to give you a few minutes to review your position. Perhaps when I return you will be prepared to tell me a more realistic story. DC Pickard will see that you get a mug of police tea, to encourage inner cleanliness.”

  He rose and was gone before the big man could find a word to say.

  *

  “Decided to tell us all about these drugs, have you, Mr Northcott? Much the best thing, if you do. Supplying crack is a serious charge, and we can’t do deals, but if you are prepared to give us information about those higher up in the chain I’m sure it would stand you in good stead when your case came—”

  “I didn’t supply drugs! I never have. I’ve been a fool, but not that much of a fool. I’ve never dealt. Not even when I was asked to. Not even pot.” Clyde hadn’t meant to say all this at once, had meant it to come out gradually, as he was sympathetically questioned. But now he was just desperate to stop this bald-headed tormentor from talking.

  “You’re sticking to this?”

  “It’s the truth. That’s why.”

  Peach, having made the dramatic re-entry he wanted, now slowed the pace of the exchange to allow his quarry serious thought. “Mr Northcott, we have quite enough evidence to obtain a search warrant, to enable us to examine your residence in detail. I have to tell you that we shall probably do so, later today. Now, what would we find there in the way of drugs?”

  Clyde thought swiftly. He didn’t think the squat little man was bluffing. “Two, maybe three rocks of cocaine. The same size as the one you found in my leathers. In the bottom drawer of the kitchen unit. Underneath a pot towel.”

  “All right. Now, you’ve been arrested in the middle of a fight, with a knife in your hand and cocaine in your bloodstream. More crack was found on your person. You say you do not supply drugs to others, that any charge in this area should be confined to the lesser one of possession. I think that in these circumstances you need to convince us of that. The best way, I can assure you, is by full co-operation. Are you willing to offer us that?”

  Clyde wondered whether he should trust him. Everyone said you should never trust the pigs. But he couldn’t see that he had much option. “All right. But I don’t know much. What is it you want?”

  “Only where, when and how you got your rocks.” A flash of the normal Peach aggression and contempt in the blunt answer. But his voice had remained quiet.

  Clyde Northcott took a deep breath. He’d decided while they were out that he wasn’t doing drugs any more, anyway. But it was a big thing to tell this lot everything they wanted, all the same. “I don’t know the bloke’s name.”

  “All right. Was it always the same one?”

  “Yes. I think so. Man in a big anorak, with the hood turned up. Not white, but not as black as me. Behind the Ugly Heifer. In the car park. Tuesdays. Ten o’clock.” He felt as he had when he was a child, taking nasty medicine all in one gulp.

  Peach glanced at Brendan Murphy, received the tiniest of nods. It was probably correct: the Heifer had a reputation for drugs. The supplier would be a small-time, but he could lead to bigger fish. The Drugs Squad would appreciate the information. “All right. If you’ve told us the truth, you needn’t worry about them finding out where the information came from. The man in the anorak will be supplying a lot of people as well as you.”

  It was Brendan Murphy who said quietly, “There’s still the other matter to clear up, Clyde. Last night’s tasty little fracas.”

  Clyde looked at the wide brown eyes, the long Irish upper lip. Was he going to get a more sympathetic hearing from this man than he had earlier from Peach? He said, “There was a woman at the bottom of it.”

  Brendan smiled. “There often is.”

  “Yes. Not that it was her fault, really. There needn’t have been any trouble.”

  Peach said more aggressively, “Suppose you give us your version of the whole evening. From where you joined the orgy to where you were found with a knife at someone’s throat when our lads arrived.”

  “I arrived later than most people. Parked my bike in the shadow of the garage — I didn’t want it to be in any danger of damage.”

  “The Yamaha 350. Nice bike.” Northcott looked his surprise. “Used to ride one myself, sunshine. Older model, of course. When you were a...when you were in infant school and falling off your fairy-cycle, I expect.”

  “Well, I went inside and took off my leathers, in what they called the family room. Went and had a drink. Then Tracey Wallace, the girl whose party it was, asked me to dance.”

  “And that’s when the trouble started. Tasty piece, Tracey. Tongue down her throat, hands round her bum. And she objected.”

  “No! It wasn’t like that! Not much more than friendly. She...she did kiss me at the end of the dance. But it was her who was making the running, not me.”

&nbs
p; “If you say so. But lover boy didn’t see it like that?”

  “That bloke Mark? No, he didn’t. He came and warned me off. Said Tracey was his girl. Public-school twat!”

  “Called him that, did you?”

  “No. But I did tell him I hadn’t made the running. Told him his girl wasn’t just a piece of property, could make her own decisions.”

  “Conciliatory, that. Just the thing to stop a shindig.”

  “Well, he annoyed me. He—”

  “He went to a public school, I know. Unfortunately, there’s no law against it. Even DC Murphy here went to Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, and I try not to hold it against him.”

  “It wasn’t that. It was that he seemed to think he only had to warn me off to send me packing.”

  “I see. Well he didn’t succeed, obviously. Or we wouldn’t be having this illuminating conversation now. Let’s have the next thrilling instalment.”

  “I kept away from her. Not because I thought that there was any reason why I should, but because I didn’t want trouble. And it wasn’t as if I was that keen on the girl, anyway. She’d made all the running.”

  “But you had another go at her before the evening was out, nevertheless.”

  Clyde was disturbed by how much they seemed to know about this. They must have talked to National Front about the events leading up to their arrest. He shuddered to think what story he would have told them. He’d better try to make his own version as convincing as he possibly could. Even if it made him seem less than gallant. “It was Tracey who had another go at me, if you must know. The lights were pretty low by then and I was hoping it wouldn’t be noticed, but it obviously was. We danced close together for about ten minutes.” He remembered her tongue between the buttons of his shirt, tickling away the sweat from the smooth skin at the top of his chest. Not a detail they needed to know, that. “We separated at the end of the dance and I decided it was time to go.”

  “Very sharp of you, that.”

  “I put on my leathers as quickly as I could and went to get my bike. I had a fear they might have been out there damaging it, but—”

  “They?”

  “Mark and his pals. I didn’t know who they were at that time, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be on his own.”

  “And what about you? Were you alone?”

  “I turned out to be. I’d hoped the lads who’d been invited to the party with me would be around if I needed them, but they weren’t, as it turned out. They were pretty drunk by then, anyway.”

  “So what you’re claiming is that you were on your own and not looking for trouble. That Paul Dutton and Mark Foster sought you out.”

  “Yes, if those are their names. There was a third man as well, but he didn’t take any part in the attack. I think he must have heard the police sirens, when the rest of us didn’t.”

  “So you’re standing on the gravel by the garage, facing three blokes who want to give you a kicking in the darkness. Have I got the picture right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s when you pulled the knife. When you saw what the odds were.”

  “No! I didn’t have a knife! I’ve never carried a knife!” This squat little opponent on the other side of the table had let him tell his tale fairly quietly for a while. Now, at the crisis of it, he was throwing in this again. Clyde wondered how he was ever going to make him believe the truth of this.

  Peach watched him for a moment. Then he said quietly, “When you were arrested by police officers you were standing over a man with a knife at his throat, Clyde. You had better tell us how you got there.”

  Clyde licked dry lips, tried to take his time, to put conviction into the words he would use. “There were three of them, as I said. I told them I was on my way and they’d not see me again, but they wouldn’t have that. They came at me together — just Mark and National Front, that is — the third one disappeared once the fighting started. I managed some sort of blow on the face of this Mark, the one who said Tracey was his girlfriend.”

  “Quite an effective sort of blow, actually. He’s still in hospital.”

  Clyde wondered whether to say he was sorry, then decided it was better to stick to the truth. “He seemed to be out of it. That was when that National Front gorilla pulled the knife.” He waited for Peach to deny it, but this time the man said nothing. “I told him not to be stupid, or something like that, but he took no notice. We grappled a bit, and I managed to get my leg behind him and throw him down. That’s when he dropped the knife. That’s when I grabbed it and stood over him.”

  “And that’s where the lads in blue came in. Good thing for everyone, that. No knowing what might have happened next, with cocaine and adrenaline coursing round your veins in equal measure.”

  Peach stood up. “Don’t go away, Mr Northcott. I’ll be back soon. Talk to DC Murphy if you want a bit of counselling.”

  *

  Paul Dutton’s condition had not improved in the twenty minutes without Peach. That was because he had been considering his situation. It appeared that the people he had thought would be kindred spirits regarded him as a racist thug. These soft-as-shit liberals were running everything now, even the police.

  As if to reinforce these thoughts, that nasty little sod of an inspector came into the room like a thunderclap. He was speaking even as he came through the doorway. “Lot of talking still to do, sunshine. Suggest you start telling the truth, pronto.” He switched on the tape recorder. “Interview resumed at 10.17.”

  Paul didn’t know what to do. He’d refused a brief scornfully at the beginning of the morning, on the ground that he wouldn’t be needed. Should he ask for one now? Could he ask for one now? He watched the cassette turning slowly, waiting for his next batch of lies. It seemed to have an almost hypnotic effect. He tore his eyes away. “I’ve told you the truth of what happened. I don’t need to alter anything. The nigger put Mark in hospital. He pulled a knife on us.” He came back to that like a chorus in a bawdy song.

  Peach regarded him with a happy smile. “Sticking to that, are you? Well, it’s your own look-out, sunshine. Not what we’ve heard from others, though.”

  “You’ve been listening to the nigger? You’re not going to take his word against—”

  “Against what, Dutton? Against your word? The word of a man who has a record as a brawler and a bully? Who can hardly open his mouth without breaking the law of the land? For your information, Mr Northcott has lived in Lancashire as long as you. Longer, in fact, because he’s a year older. And yes, we’ve listened to what he has to say, just the same as we’ve listened to you.”

  “But you’re still going to take the...take his word against mine. And you call that bloody fair, do you?”

  Peach looked at Dutton as if he was something he had trodden in on a dark night. Without taking his eyes from the broad, meaty face he said, “Tell him, DC Pickard, please.”

  Tony Pickard chose his words carefully, but delivered them with a certain relish. “We have statements, Mr Dutton. From independent witnesses, who saw everything which happened in front of that garage. Typed and signed, as a true record.”

  Paul’s heart leapt to his throat and for a second his head swam. There couldn’t have been anyone who saw what had happened. They’d been on their own, hadn’t they? Well, they had when they started shouting at each other — he couldn’t be sure if anyone had come out of the house after that. He heard the uncertainty in his own voice as he tried to bluster. “If you’re going to take the words of the...of that bastard’s friends—”

  “The people who have spoken to us were not friends of Mr Northcott.” Tony Pickard was quite enjoying this. “We shall not reveal who they are at this point, though copies of statements will of course be made available to your lawyers if and when the matter comes to court. But you might wish to know that your friend Mark Foster talked to us in hospital. I understand, incidentally, that he is being discharged about now. His statement is being prepared for his signature. It is inte
resting to note that it differs from your version of events at almost every important point.”

  Paul thought desperately as the last threads of his confidence were torn from him. “He must be concussed. That black bastard hit him so hard he can’t remember things clearly. You should never have—”

  “His isn’t the only statement we have, Mr Dutton.” Peach’s voice pierced his rantings like a sliver of ice. “We shall be asking for a statement from you, in due course. Asking for you to sign a written record of it. Allow me to remind you of the official opening of such statements: ‘This statement is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and I make it knowing that if it is tendered in evidence I shall be liable to prosecution if I have wilfully stated in it anything which I know to be false or do not believe to be true.’”

  Peach sat back on his chair, not troubling to conceal his evident distaste for the man in front of him. “You would be well advised to consider those words, Mr Dutton. I do not believe that you are as stupid or as unintelligent as the picture you have so far presented of yourself. In compiling your own statement, you should think about whether you really want to get yourself even deeper into trouble than you are at this moment.”

  He turned back at the door, just as the huge frame was slumping into despair. “By the way, I shall be back presently. Want to talk to you about another matter altogether. I’d like to administer a truth drug, but all I’m allowed is Brunton police-station coffee. Let’s hope it has the same effect.”

  *

  “Well. Mr Northcott. We may not need to retain you much longer, if you continue to co-operate with us.”

  Clyde didn’t trust the smile beneath that jet-black moustache, but he noted the last phrase with hope. Perhaps it meant that they believed him. He said, “What I’ve told you is the truth.”

  “And nothing but the truth. I know — they all say that.” Peach beamed delightedly. “We don’t intend to charge you with carrying an offensive weapon or malicious wounding. As far as we can gather from independent witnesses, you were the victim rather than the aggressor. What would have happened to our National Front representative if our lads hadn’t intervened is mere speculation.” He beamed conspiratorially at Clyde, then assumed a straight face as if he were donning a mask. “We shall need to have a look round your place of residence: we shall have no difficulty in obtaining a search warrant to do that. If a search of your abode reveals that you have told us the truth about those cocaine rocks, you will not be charged with the supply of drugs. You will almost certainly be charged with possession. I cannot of course say what the outcome of any such charge will be.”