Brothers in Blood (26 page)
Snow had seen the snap before. There had been an identical one in the tin box he had found at Alex Marshall’s house. The connection was sealed – surely? He allowed himself a brief grin of satisfaction before showing the photograph to Fellows. Without a word the two men exchanged knowing glances. Now, thought Snow, all they had to do was find this Russell Blake.
‘Bloody hell!’ Inspector Ray ‘Dinosaur’ Daniels gave a cry of dismay as his size elevens slipped in the mud and he ended up plonking one foot into the water. (He was known as ‘Dinosaur’ partly because he had the size and clumsiness of a prehistoric beast and partly because he seemed to have been in the force since the beginning of time.) ‘Why can’t they murder ‘em somewhere where it’s dry?’ he moaned. None of the other officers offered a response.
Stepping back on to firmer ground and wiping his shoe on the grass, Daniels watched as the two officers in wet suits pulled the body onto the banks of the murky pool. The bulk of it was covered with the slime and silt, but the head and face were comparatively clean.
‘My God,’ said Daniels, gazing at the back of the victim’s skull. ‘He certainly had his brains bashed in and not half. His killer was taking no chances for him to survive. I think we’ve got a nasty one here, Sergeant’
His pale-faced companion nodded.
‘No worries about the fellow’s identity, sir,’ cried one of the wet-suited officers. He held up a small black object. ‘It’s his wallet. Got all his info inside: credit card, NUT membership card. It seems he’s a teacher. Lives at Willows Walk.’
‘Name?’
‘Russell Blake.’
That evening as Paul Snow was attempting to unwind with a can of lager and some pap television, the doorbell rang. It had a soft tone, but whoever had his finger on the bell was holding it down, creating a long-winded irritating, muted cacophony.
With a frown of annoyance etched deep in his forehead and a grunted sigh, Snow dragged himself from his armchair and answered the front door. Michael Armitage was standing on the threshold. His stance was macho: legs apart, arms folded across his chest, a cocky smile nailed to his lips, eyes glittering with malice. A parochial Rambo.
‘Evenin’, sir,’ he said, the cocky smile spreading. ‘Sorry to bother you at home, but I’ve got some business to discuss and I reckoned it were better done on your own patch, rather than at work. Can I come in?’
For the moment Snow was lost for words. He had a good idea what the ‘business’ was that Armitage wished to discuss but he had no notion how to respond. He had not expected this. Well, not yet anyway. Not so soon. Armitage it seemed was already moving matters into the fast lane.
Snow pulled the door back and stood aside to let his visitor inside and guided him into the sitting room.
Armitage saw Snow’s can of lager by his chair and nodded. ‘Wouldn’t mind one of them myself. Got a spare?’
Still without speaking, Snow retrieved a cold can from the fridge in the kitchen and handed it to Armitage.
‘Ta. The perfect host. Still you lot are good at the niceties, aren’t you?’ He softened his voice to an effeminate sibilance on the word ‘niceties’.
‘What can I do for you, Sergeant?’ Snow said.
Armitage pulled the ring on the lager can as though it was a hand grenade and took a large gulp.
‘Do you like the leather jacket? Pretty cool, eh? Cost a packet. Normally I wouldn’t be able to afford such things… but now…’
Snow found himself clenching his fists again with suppressed anger. He wanted to kill the man. To beat the sneering, arrogant corrupt bastard to death and then stamp on his face. That’s what he wanted to do. It was as simple as that. It took all his self-control not to launch himself at Armitage and strangle the life out of him, to watch the light fade from those mocking eyes and that grin to twist into a grimace of pain. But instead, he just raised an eyebrow and waited for Armitage to continue.
‘I reckon it’s time that we came to a regular arrangement. The one off cash payment was good but now the money’s spent, I find I’m in need of more.’
Snow continued to remain silent.
‘I think you know what I’m saying.’
Armitage still received no response. His face darkened with annoyance. ‘If you want me to keep stum about you being a pansy boy, you’re gonna have to cough up on regular basis. Like an insurance policy.’
Snow was about to say, ‘And if I refuse…?’ but he was well aware that this would be a redundant query. He already knew the answer. Armitage would take great and malicious pleasure in demolishing his career.
The same feeling of despair that Snow had experienced the first time Armitage had issued his blackmail threats swept him once more. He was cornered, snared like a rat in a trap. There was nowhere for him to run, to hide, to escape. He had to meet his miserable fate head on.
‘I think you know what I mean,’ sneered Armitage.
‘And I think that you’d better get to the point,’ Snow said.
After a sleepless night, Snow drove into the office early. He felt a leaden weight upon his soul and in truth he didn’t know how he was going to get through the next few days, let alone the rest of his life. It wasn’t just the financial damage that Armitage was imposing on him, but the fact that in a sense he was now the prisoner, the plaything and puppet of this foul and evil man. Apart from money, what else could this swine demand of him?
Once in his office and cradling a cup of the blackest coffee, he tried to shun thoughts of Armitage for the moment and force himself to concentrate on the case in hand. As it turned out, events aided him in this pursuit.
There was a tap at the door and Sally Morgan came in. ‘A bit of news, sir. We’ve had a response from the Sea Hotel in Brighton at last.’ She smiled and it was a warm, almost affectionate smile. In Snow’s rather delicate and tortured state, it touched him, almost bringing a lump to his throat.
‘Good,’ he said and attempted to return the smile.
‘Apparently there were three people staying at the hotel on that day with a letter L in either their first or last name.’ She consulted a sheet of paper she held in her hand. ‘A Lorna Hirst, a Laurence Dane and a Gladys Lightfoot.’
Snow made a note of the names. Of course, one leapt out at him: Laurence Dane. That was the name of the actor on the two play bills in Russell Blake’s office.
‘See if you can find out anything about Mr Dane, Sally. See if he’s got form. He’s an actor and probably registered with Equity.’
‘I’ll get on to it.’ She gave a mock salute.
‘Thanks.’
‘And there’s more,’ added Sally brightly. ‘I’ve been able to identify that fellow in the photograph, the big chap on the motorbike.
He
certainly had form.’
‘Go on,’ said Snow.
‘Darren Rhodes. Huddersfield chap from Sheepton. He did time for aggravated robbery. The old biddy he robbed died of a heart attack. And then he won the pools. He was a bit of a local celebrity at the time. This was back in the late sixties. He was involved in a mysterious motorbike accident in 1970. He lost a leg.’
‘Why was it mysterious?’
‘Well, he lost his memory for a while and when some it came back he claimed he had been tricked into speeding and that his bike had been tampered with. I doubt if anyone believed him… but you never know.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Sorry, sir, he died of a drug overdose in 1978.’
‘Dead, eh? Well, he’s not going to be much help to us at the moment.’
‘I know sir, but it’s another piece of the jigsaw. The more pieces we get…’
Suddenly Snow found himself grinning. His emotions were off the radar this morning.
‘Are you always this positive, Sally?’
‘Well, in this job, you’ve got to be, otherwise you’ll go under. Crikey, you know that better than me.’
Snow nodded. He certainly did.
‘Are you all right, sir? You look a bit…’ She struggled for the word, conscious she was speaking to a senior officer. She didn’t want to use the word ‘depressed’ although that fitted her observations exactly, but the word had all sorts of clinical implications.
‘… a bit down,’ she said at last.
Snow gazed up at Sally’s soft, sensitive features and smiled. He was not only touched by her concern but a little devil within him tempted him to tell her all his problems, to spill the beans about Armitage and wait to be comforted by her like a mother hen.
‘I’m just my usual early morning grumpy self.’
‘It’s living alone that does it. No one to confide in. No one to share your problems with, things that are troubling you. It’s good to get things off your chest now and then.’
Snow knew that Sally was not only referring to him; she too lived alone after a messy divorce some two years before. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to travel any further down this road. Not because he did not like Sally or appreciate her unspoken offer, it was that his baggage was too sensitive to unpack with her – or anyone.
‘We make life choices,’ he said and immediately regretted it. Sally hadn’t made her life choice. Her cheating husband had. He’d dumped her and run off with his fancy bit on the side leaving Sally to face life as a single woman once again. She’d had no choice in the matter.
For a moment Sally’s smile faded but very quickly it came back. She nodded as though in agreement. ‘Well, sir, any time you need to bend someone’s ear…’
Before he could respond, she left the room.
‘Handled that well,’ he murmured to himself and sighed heavily.
The telephone on his desk rang shrilly, preventing any further negative thoughts from invading his mind. He snatched up the receiver, but before he was able to speak, a breathy voice at the other end said, ‘Am I speaking to Detective Inspector Paul Snow?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. This is Inspector Ray Daniels, Northumberland Police. I gather you’ve been doing a bit of plodding on my patch.’
‘Just making some enquiries.’
The voice at the other end laughed. It was a deep-seated wheezy laugh. A heavy smoker, Snow thought.
‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Inspector. I’m not one of those fellows who gets upset if an officer from another force comes snooping around his manor. We’re all in the same boat after all. We’re all trawling for wrong ‘uns.’
Colourful imagery.
‘Yes.’ Snow wondered where all this was going.
‘I gather you were interested in a certain Russell Blake.’
‘I still am.’
‘Well, we’ve got him.’
The nape of Snow’s neck tingled. ‘Have you?’
‘Well, to be more precise, we’ve got him on a slab. He’s not up to answering questions, unfortunately.’
‘Can you give me details?’
‘Certainly. I can do more than that. If you’d like to pop back up here I can show you the body and fill you in on all that we’ve got.’
‘That’s very generous of you,’ Snow said and he meant it.
‘As I say… same boat.’
‘How did he die?’
‘Head smashed in… to a pulp actually and dumped in a pool.’
Snow grimaced. Another corpse to add to the growing list.
‘I can be with you around lunchtime.’
‘Good. We can down a pint or two together after viewing the exhibit,’ said Daniels with another wheezy laugh.
Ray (Dinosaur) Daniels plonked down a glass of sparkling mineral water on the table in front of Paul Snow with a scowl of disdain. ‘I thought you Yorkshire lads like to sup ale,’ he said, lowering his considerable weight onto a bar stool.
‘I have to drive back to Huddersfield. Don’t want to be breathalysed on the way.’
‘Hey lad, just show ‘em your badge and they’ll let you off.’
Paul had already sussed that Daniels was that kind of policeman, one who ignored the rules except for those he made up himself. He certainly was of the old school and should they ever bring 1956 back again, Detective Inspector Ray Daniels would feel at home. They had visited the morgue where the body of Russell Blake was still lodged after his autopsy which, as Daniels commented, ‘had told us bugger all that we didn’t know already’.
He had been beaten about the head with a stone – particles of which had been found in his hair – and had been dead when he hit the water. He was a teacher at a local secondary school – taught English – was married to Sandra and she was expecting their first child. He seemed, on the surface at least, a decent respectable sort of bloke. His wife had no idea who would want to kill him. That, as Ray Daniels explained, was about it.
It was interesting information but, like so much that Snow was learning in recent days, it did not really throw much light on the dark events he was trying to investigate. What exactly connected a school teacher from Durham with the murders in Huddersfield still eluded him. But he was certain there was a connection.
‘So now, lad,’ the large inspector intoned, leaning forward, after taking a large gulp of bitter, the froth leaving a faint creamy moustache on his upper lip, ‘I want to hear your story. Why are you so interested in our dead school master?’ He sat back and lit a cigarette.
‘It’s complicated and somewhat tenuous at the moment, but…’
‘I can do tenuous and complicated,’ grinned Daniels.
In simple and concise terms, Snow recounted the details of the killings at Matt Wilkinson’s house and grim events that followed. By the time he had finished, Daniels had consumed his pint and was ready for another.
‘Crikey,’ he said, ‘it’ll take me a while to get my head around all that. I’m off for a Jimmy Riddle and to get another pint. D’you want another drink?’
Snow had hardly touched his water and shook his head. ‘I’d better be making tracks soon. Get back to base.’
While Daniels was away, Snow went over the facts again in his mind, trying to edit out the insignificant details and concentrate on those elements that forged connections. Three men had been brutally murdered – three men who were in the habit of raping homosexuals. They were killed by three murderers, one of whom, Alex Marshall, had been brutalised by Wilkinson and his cohorts in the past. Therefore it was reasonable to assume that this was a revenge scenario. Well, Snow hoped it was reasonable. It appeared that two of the killers – and he was taking a leap in assuming that the school teacher Russell Blake was one of the trio – had been murdered themselves. And so the question was, who by? Was the culprit killer number three to protect his own identity or some unknown, a Mr X?