Least of Evils Read online

  The feeling was reinforced by another outburst of obscenities as the man scaled the wall behind him. The odds were with the intruder now. He could surely outdistance this toiling and breathless opponent.

  Except that the invisible enemy was armed.

  The intruder did not look back, did not see the heavy figure drop on to one knee and take aim at his flying target. The first shot hit the road beside him sparking unnaturally bright with the impact, flinging grit into his panting face. The second hit his arm, but he scarcely felt pain through his fear.

  He was sprinting flat out now. And he was right, he was quicker than his pursuer. Without the weapon, he would have escaped. But the third bullet hit his thigh and brought him down. His right leg was useless, even as the left tried to race on with a momentum of its own. He fell in a crumbling heap upon the road, the sudden agony of the flesh tearing from his palm even fiercer than that of the greater wound beneath him.

  Things slowed down abruptly. He was groaning when the man with the firearm arrived, his leg clutched to his chest, the blood flooding through his fingers from the ragged hole in his jeans. The man stood breathing heavily above him for a moment, then began to kick his ribs and his head methodically.

  Neither victim or attacker was sure of the moment when the figure on the road became unconscious.

  TWO

  It was a hard winter in East Lancashire, the second in succession. There had been snow on the top of Pendle Hill and the higher mountains of Ingleborough and Pen-y-Ghent to the north of Brunton for seven weeks now. The golf course fairways where former cricketer Detective Chief Inspector ‘Percy’ Peach now took his exercise had been frozen hard for the whole of January.

  It was the last day of that month and it had been a sunny one. But DCI Peach, climbing the staircase to the penthouse office of Chief Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker, could see no grounds for optimism. Another clear night to come, another hard frost. And before that, another fruitless meeting with the beacon of inefficiency known throughout the Brunton CID section as Tommy Bloody Tucker.

  He pressed the button beside the ‘Head of CID’ sign and watched a succession of lights beside it flash before a despairing voice barked, ‘Come!’

  Tucker’s desk was uncharacteristically strewn with sheets of paper. ‘I can come back later if you’re busy, sir,’ said Percy hopefully.

  ‘No need for that, Percy,’ said Tucker affably.

  Peach noted the use of his first name: always the warning of some Tucker scheme. ‘But I can see you’re weighed down with the cares and responsibility of office, sir.’ Peach gestured with a wide sweep of his arm at the sheets on the huge desk.

  ‘Nothing that can’t be set aside for my Chief Inspector. Do please take a seat, Percy.’

  Something shitty was plainly in the offing. Percy lowered his buttocks to the seat in front of the desk as gingerly as a virgin in a rugby club. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘And how is the world treating you, Percy? How is married life treating my favourite protégé?’

  It seemed to have finally been stored in Tucker’s elusive memory bank that Peach had married his former detective sergeant, Lucy Blake, an event which had brought alongside connubial bliss the unwelcome fact that they could no longer work together. ‘Married life suits me down to the ground, sir. I find I am now enjoying a more balanced diet, as well as the multiple and varied delights of the bedroom.’ Percy allowed a euphoric smile to accompany his dreamy stare into the middle distance.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I see. Well it’s early days yet, isn’t it?’ Tucker appeared to find the idea of happiness in marriage a difficult concept to handle, which was hardly surprising in view of his own spouse, the formidable battleaxe Peach had christened Brunnhilde Barbara.

  ‘Not so early, sir. Six months now. And it don’t seem a day too long, as dear old Albert Chevalier used to say.’

  Tommy Bloody Tucker looked pleasingly vacant; the history of the music hall was not one of his interests. ‘Didn’t he sing, “Thank heaven for little girls”? I hope you’re not becoming a paedophile, Percy!’ The head of CID was overcome by a sudden burst of hilarity at the wit of his suggestion.

  Peach produced the sickliest of his vast range of smiles. ‘That was Maurice Chevalier, sir. Different sort of cove altogether.’

  ‘I see. Well, it’s always a pleasure to exchange pleasantries with you, Percy, but we must get down to business. I want to run one or two things past you. One or two initiatives which I’m sure you’ll welcome.’

  He didn’t look at all sure, and initiative was not a word Percy associated with Tommy Bloody Tucker. He said with heavy irony, ‘Your overview of the wider crime scene and the society in which we operate gives you a perspective unavailable to the rest of us, sir.’

  Irony was as usual wasted on T.B. Tucker. He said earnestly, ‘It is part of my job to keep up standards in the CID section, you know. And I have to say that they seem to me to have been slipping lately.’

  ‘In what respect, sir? We have kept the overtime budget strictly within the limits you defined for us before Christmas. Our clear-up rates are—’

  ‘Dress, Peach, dress. Standards of dress are not what they were.’

  ‘Ah!’ At least the bee in the Tucker bonnet seemed relatively harmless this time.

  ‘I have drafted a directive which I intend to circulate among the CID section. I wanted to run it past you before I issued it. If the Chief Constable approves, we could circulate it among the uniformed staff also. I have noticed a most reprehensible sloppiness among some of our younger officers.’ The chief superintendent pushed a typewritten sheet across the desk to his junior.

  Percy read the piece diligently and found himself struggling to prevent genuine mirth from bursting unbidden into his shining round face – a sensation he could never recall before in this room. ‘It’s – well, it’s not quite what I was expecting, sir.’

  Tucker took the sheet back and read aloud with some pride: ‘“It has come to my notice that the standards of dress which should be automatic and universally recognized among police personnel are not always being observed. Officers should remember that they represent the service and present a smart appearance at all times, except for those rare occasions when they are operating under cover. In particular, underwear should be of an appropriate colour, so as to be inconspicuous beneath whatever outer wear is adopted.”’

  He looked very satisfied with himself. Peach allowed the pause to develop towards the pregnant before he said with exquisite timing, ‘Our girls been flashing their knickers on the main streets of Brunton, have they, sir?’

  ‘What?’ Tucker wore the bewildered goldfish expression which Percy always regarded as a mark of success. He said sternly, ‘I wasn’t thinking about women officers, Peach.’

  Percy noted the welcome return of his surname. ‘Fifty per cent of our younger officers are female, sir. They will take this as a direct reference to their breeks.’

  ‘Breeks?’

  ‘Panties, sir? Perhaps Mrs Tucker prefers that term? Unless of course she favours the thong.’ An awesome picture-postcard version of the Wagnerian rear of Brunnhilde Barbara in a thong soared into Peach’s vision and refused to be banished.

  ‘You don’t think it a good idea to circulate this?’ Tucker’s fifty-three-year-old features dissolved into the dismay of a child.

  ‘I think our younger officers might treat it with derision, sir. The female ones might even react with defiance. They might choose to wear no underwear at all.’ The vision of Brunnhilde Barbara disappeared at last with the advent of this vivid and wholly more delightful picture.

  ‘I am the Head of Brunton CID, Peach, and not a man to be trifled with. They would disobey my directive at their peril.’

  ‘Indeed, sir. But how would you ensure that it was obeyed? Would you hold regular inspections of underwear? I would of course offer you my personal support and assistance in the implementation of such a policy. But it might be tricky.’

 
; ‘Tricky?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The inspections would afford a considerable degree of personal satisfaction and even certain excitements, but they might be tricky to implement. Call me a Jonah if you will, but I foresee accusations of sexual harassment from some of our more feisty female staff. And what the papers might make of it, I shudder to—’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think I can see what you mean.’ As always, the mention of media reaction and journalistic ridicule had Tucker’s immediate attention. ‘Well, perhaps I’ll look at it again before I circulate it.’

  ‘I think that would be advisable, sir.’

  Tucker stared regretfully at the sheet in his hand. ‘It seems a pity, though. I’ve spent most of my day on this.’

  Percy Peach noted as he descended the stairs from Tucker’s office that the sun had now set on the last day of January. He tried not to think of the cost to the public purse of the hours Tommy Bloody Tucker had spent devising the dress directive he had just aborted. At least it had prevented the real damage he could have caused by actually interfering in the business of arresting villains.

  Things had been very quiet for the last two months. What they needed was a serious crime of a really puzzling sort, so that the chief could worry about other things.

  The man who had broken into Thorley Grange and stolen the jewellery was lucky. He was left unconscious by the side of the lane where he had fallen and been battered by his pursuer’s boots. He wore a fleece, but his lower limbs and his wounded leg carried only jeans and trainers. On a freezing January night in this high and isolated place, hypothermia would have killed him before morning. But a little while after he had fallen, a motorist not only saw the prone figure but stopped to investigate it.

  The hospital notified the police that a victim with gunshot wounds had been admitted, as was standard practice. The injuries were not life-threatening, but shock and the interval spent on the lane before he was discovered meant that the ward sister prevented the uniformed constable from speaking to him until three o’clock on the afternoon after he had been injured. He revealed that his name was Edward Barton, that he was twenty-two, and that he lived with his mother on a council estate in Brunton. Beyond that, he was resolutely silent, like a soldier taken prisoner who reveals only name, rank and number.

  The constable reported to the station that it seemed unlikely that Barton’s gunshot wounds were the outcome of a domestic incident. The matter was referred to CID with some satisfaction by the uniformed inspector. If this was going to occupy a lot of police time and produce nothing, let those clever buggers in plain clothes earn their money.

  It was seven in the evening by the time Detective Sergeant Lucy Peach and Detective Constable Brendan Murphy arrived at the hospital. The nursing personnel had changed and the night sister was more amenable to police access to her patient. Possibly this was because there was a personable woman as the police presence this time; more likely it was because the patient had been surly, uncommunicative and ungrateful for what had been done for him. He had also threatened to discharge himself. The sister said, ‘I can give you twenty minutes. I hope you get more out of him than we can.’

  Edward Barton had a thin, alert face and a discontented expression. His deliberately blank pupils focussed for a moment on the blue-green eyes, vivid chestnut hair and dramatic upper contours of Lucy Peach, vividly presented beneath a dark green sweater. Then he saw the tall frame of Brendan Murphy behind her and realized that these were filth. Plain-clothes filth, and in one case filth in a very attractive guise. But filth nonetheless, and therefore worthy of his controlled hostility. He blanked them and said, ‘I’ve nothing to say to you lot, I told that young sod that this afternoon.’

  ‘Indeed you did, Eddie. It was because you were so uncooperative to our constable that DC Murphy and I have ruined our evening to come and see you now.’ Lucy afforded him a dazzling smile. Be pleasant, until you knew for certain that wasn’t going to work.

  ‘You’ve ruined your evening for fuck all. That’s all I’ve got to tell you.’

  ‘Oh, you can tell us much more than that, if you wish to, Eddie. The question is whether you choose to do so or not.’

  ‘I choose not to, bitch. I’ve already told you that. Are you thick or summat?’

  Lucy smiled again, less friendly but still tolerant of his youthful defiance. She sat on the chair beside the bed and leaned towards the man within it, making him acutely conscious of her scent and her splendid bosom. Barton found both disconcerting, but he said determinedly, ‘I’ve sod all to say to the likes of you.’

  DC Murphy brought another chair and sat down close to his sergeant. ‘You would be well advised to watch your tongue and be more helpful, lad.’

  Barton transferred his attention reluctantly from the pneumatic DS Peach to the fresh face which was only a little older than his own. ‘Or what, pig?’

  ‘Or we might arrest you as you leave here and take you down to the station for further questioning.’

  ‘And why would you do that, punk?’

  ‘On the grounds of wasting police time, Mr Barton. On the grounds of refusing to assist the police in the investigation of a serious crime.’

  Eddie wasn’t certain whether they could do that, but he didn’t want to risk it. He sank back on his pillow and gazed straight ahead of him across the ward. ‘I don’t know nothing.’

  ‘Ah, so you know something. That’s what we thought; that’s why we’re here.’ Lucy Peach drew his attention back immediately. Eddie didn’t understand double negatives, but he was obscurely aware that he’d made a mistake. He looked into those wide and lustrous female eyes and said, ‘I can see why they call you Peach, darling! You’re a ripe peach, aren’t you? I wouldn’t mind stroking your—’

  ‘Who put those bullets into you, Eddie?’

  ‘Get lost, bitch. I ain’t no grass.’

  Murphy leaned across and touched the slight mound in the blankets which showed where Barton’s right thigh was bandaged, producing an immediate gasp and wince from the patient. ‘Nurse! Nurse, I want you to see this.’

  But apparently there was no nurse within earshot. Barton wished that he had been more appreciative and less surly about the medical care he had received earlier in the day. He tried to sound convincing as he said, ‘I’ll have you for police brutality for that, you bastard!’

  Lucy smiled. ‘For enquiring diligently after your health, Eddie? Perhaps you shouldn’t twist around so much in your bed, if it’s painful for you.’ Then in a quite different, more businesslike voice, she said, ‘Stop pissing us about, Mr Barton. How did you acquire the injuries for which you have been treated here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. That happens, when you’re in shock, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Sometimes it does – when people have been almost killed in road accidents, for instance. But not when they’ve received flesh wounds in the upper left arm and in the thigh.’

  ‘Well, I don’t remember.’

  ‘You got a good kicking as well as bullets, didn’t you? From a man who battered you unconscious and then left you to die. A broken rib as well as gunshot wounds. If I were you, I’d want some sort of revenge on a callous sod like that.’

  Barton did, and for a moment he was tempted. But the episode had left him with a deep fear which was more powerful. His face set into a sullen mask. ‘I didn’t see nothing. I hadn’t done nothing. I don’t know who he was or why he did it.’

  DC Murphy let his arms float over the bed for a moment, as if he proposed further examination of the patient’s injuries. Then he folded his arms and said, ‘You were found outside Thorley Grange, Mr Barton. What were you doing there?’

  ‘Thorley Grange. Where’s that?’ Eddie was rather proud of the furrowed brow of puzzlement he contrived for this.

  ‘It’s on high ground at the western edge of Brunton, Mr Barton. It’s our belief that you know that perfectly well. So what were you doing there?’

  ‘I don’t know how I got there – I
never go up there.’ He managed to look genuinely puzzled. ‘Perhaps that’s why I don’t remember anything. Perhaps I was shot in the town and then dumped up there after a good kicking. Lucky for me that someone found me and got the ambulance, I suppose.’

  Murphy regarded him steadily for a moment, as if challenging him to further ridiculous speculation. He said tersely, ‘You’ve been very lucky indeed, Mr Barton – so far. I’ve a feeling your luck is going to run out any second now.’ He reached towards the heavily plastered bicep beside him. Barton winced away, but Murphy merely put it back under the bedclothes with exaggerated solicitude. ‘Why were you in that lonely spot beside Thorley Grange?’

  Barton stared straight ahead and spoke as if repeating a mantra he had memorized. ‘I’ve no idea why I was found there. I don’t even know where the place is. Someone must have dumped me up there.’ Then he said with more animation, ‘You lot should be trying to find who attacked me, not harassing a wounded man.’

  Lucy Peach said quietly, ‘That’s exactly why we’re here, Eddie. But unless you’re prepared to help us, we don’t stand much chance.’

  ‘You don’t stand much chance anyway. You’re a waste of fucking time.’

  DS Peach held her hand up as Brendan Murphy leaned over the bed again. ‘We’ve wasted enough police time on you, Eddie Barton. There’s been a uniformed copper outside the ward all the time you’ve been in here, to make sure no one could get at you. You’ll be out of here soon and no one will protect you then. You’ve strayed out of your depth, but unless you’re prepared to help us, there’s nothing we can do to keep you safe. You should think about that, while there’s still time.’

  ‘Fuck off, pigs!’ The reaction was automatic. Eddie Barton was no grass, was he? And the pigs didn’t protect you, once they had what they wanted. He enjoyed his obscenities more because they were directed against a woman, and a pretty one at that – some vestige of ethics still told him it was more shocking to direct these things against a woman, even one who seemed to be as unshockable as this one.