Hunting for Crows (20 page)

‘I don’t know Derek, I’m fishing. It’s what we cops, or should I say what we ex-cops do.’

‘There was no official connection between Street and the band. We knew him as a contract roadie, a guy who joined up for the big tours and buggered off when they were finished.’

‘I understand, Derek, but were you or the other guys responsible in some way for sending him back to prison for twenty-odd years? I know if someone did that to me, it wouldn’t be a serious fucking grudge I would hold, I wouldn’t be happy until I had their bollocks locked in a vice and my hand on a blazing-hot blowtorch.’

DI Henderson turned off the A27 and headed towards Eastbourne. It was a fine sunny day with clear views across the Channel, but the biting wind was forcing dog-owners to walk with their heads down and jackets fastened. Shame, the dogs seemed happy enough to be out.

‘There it is,’ DS Walters said from the passenger seat, looking out of the window at the tops of buildings and over to a murky sea, ‘God’s Waiting Room.’

‘You and your cynical brethren might not be aware, but the number of elderly people in Brighton is much higher than here in Eastbourne.’

‘You’re kidding me. All I see outside Churchill Square are gangs of young girls, and groups of young lads hanging around the pubs in the Lanes. Any time I go to Eastbourne, the only gangs I see are made up of old folk heading down to the seafront for a snooze on one of the benches along the esplanade.’

‘It’s true. Brighton has nearly three times the number of over-eighties as Eastbourne, but because it’s bigger, there are more places for them to go, and with all the universities and numerous language schools around the place, the youngsters keep the town looking young.’

Derek Crow’s friend from the criminal side of life, Mathew Street, lived in Belmore Road, a street not gifted with much greenery, except a skimpy smattering of small privet hedges. He proved a hard man to track down, not because he jetted across the country doing important work or led a hectic social life, but because he wouldn’t answer the phone. When he did, he made it plain he didn’t like the police and proved reluctant to help them. Walters was forced to apply a little pressure by reminding him they were conducting a murder investigation and if he wouldn’t see them in Eastbourne they would drag him to Brighton instead.

The house looked comfortably furnished, if a little on the old-fashioned side for Henderson’s tastes, but it was tidy and had recently been cleaned. The man himself was ensconced in his favourite chair with a whisky, watching horse racing on television. He had a thin, wiry face with so many lines and crevices an astronomer could mistake it for the surface of a new planet and sparse almost non-existent grey hair. His skin was dull and sallow, a bad reflection on Eastbourne’s claim to be one of the sunniest places in the UK.

‘I wanna see what happens in this race, ok?’

It was a statement, not a question, and he didn’t look around to see if they were put out, which they weren’t. In truth, Henderson loathed horse racing and any form of gambling, as in his experience it wasted lives and destroyed marriages, witnessed at first hand with two uncles in Scotland and a couple of coppers he knew on the Sussex force.

The room may have looked neat and tidy but there was no disguising the reek of cigarette smoke, and even though the window was open as it was a bright, sunny day, he was puffing away as if his life depended on it. He was either addicted to the nasty white sticks or watching the gee-gees made him nervous, as no sooner did he finish one than he lit up another.

From a brief introduction, Henderson detected no respiratory problems nor any issue with his mobility, and he didn’t see any walking sticks or his pet hate, oxygen cylinders, in the hall. It was a sad reflection on the lottery of life when Frannie Copeland’s only guilty pleasure was tugging away on the odd cigar and yet he would spend the rest of his life moving around like a cripple, while the man sitting here, doing a fair impression of the Flying Scotsman emerging from Stowe Hill Tunnel, seemed to be in full possession of his faculties.

In a noisy climax both on the box and in the room, the race ended with his horse, Bonny Lad, falling at the last hurdle. In response, this particular Eastbourne punter leapt from his chair with surprising agility for a man over sixty, and using more force than necessary, switched the television off.

‘Fucking nags, they never do what you want,’ he said to the room. ‘I should pack it in and take up hill walking. Ha, ha, fat chance.’ He spoke with a London twang in deep, guttural tones, not surprising if he always smoked his cigarettes in such an enthusiastic fashion.

‘As Sergeant Walters said to you on the phone, Mr Street–’

‘Call me Mat, everybody else does.’

‘Well, Mat, as my sergeant no doubt told you, we are in the process of investigating the deaths of three members of the Crazy Crows rock band.’

‘What the hell’s it got to do with me?’

‘Nothing, as far as we know. Your name has come up in enquiries, that’s all. Tell me, how did you first get involved with the band?’

He ran long fingers through wisps of hair, or what was left of it. ‘I was doing some joinery work at the Hammersmith Apollo, fixing the broken seating and re-fitting cracked banisters and handrails after the fans of some boy band trashed the place. I got talking to them when they came in for rehearsals. It developed from there and I joined them whenever they went on tour.’

‘What was the attraction for you working for them?’ Walters asked.

‘It wasn’t the bloody music that’s for sure, the stuff they played was just a load of fucking noise. I like to listen to country and western myself, there’s always a nice melody and I can hear the words, not a load of mumbles over a noisy guitar.’

‘If not the music, then what?’

‘The job involved a lot of traveling and I was getting fed up with London, too much heat, if you know what I mean.’

Henderson did know what he meant. With any new security van robbery, bank heist or payroll stick-up, a man like Street would be one of the first suspects to be wheeled into a police station ‘to help them with their enquiries.’

‘What did you do for the band?’ Henderson asked.

‘I started off as a roadie, but because I could do carpentry as well I also got involved in building stands and rigs for the stage, that kind of thing.’

‘How did you get along together?’

‘I suppose I got on best with Eric Hannah. I come from the East End and he came from south London. I found out he liked gangster movies and guns, so I got him magazines from the US and took him down to my local boozer in Plaistow and introduced him to some people I knew. He was over the moon, star struck. I thought it was meant to be the other way round,’ he said, laughing at a joke Henderson was sure he’d cracked many times.

‘So you became good mates with the boys in the band?’

‘I wouldn’t say best mates, but they could always find me when they wanted summat.’

‘According to Frannie Copeland you were around quite a lot.’

‘Is the old fucker still alive, well blow me? I thought that ignorant bastard would have died a long ago. Weak lungs you see, he got TB as a kid. He hated me being there as he said it undermined his authority or some shite or other. I think it was because I didn’t like him and Frannie only likes people who like him. Weird init?’

My, my, the old bugger could be quite the armchair philosopher and psychoanalyst when he put his mind to it, not to mention behaving like a crabby old pensioner.

‘I went touring with them in the UK in ’85, Germany in ’86, Denmark ’86 and a couple more I don’t remember. When the tour finished, I wouldn’t see ’em again for months.’

‘What other things did you do for them?’ Walters asked.

He looked at her with narrow, weasel eyes. ‘Ach, what do I care what I say? I’m outa the game now, I’ve done my time. I’d get ’em cheap booze, fags, bits of equipment, clothes like jeans and leather jackets. You name it.’

‘It sounds to me,’ Walters said, ‘you got on with them better than you’re letting on.’

‘Does it? Well, there you go. Thinking back, they didn’t make it easy for anyone to get on with them as they were an odd bunch. Crow junior, that’s what I called Barry, was a lap-dog to his big brother and did whatever he told him to do. It was pathetic to watch sometimes, the poor sap couldn’t take a crap without his brother’s say-so.’

‘What about Peter?’

‘Grant? He was all right, a bit boring but he got his fair share of the birds. I mean Hannah was the dog’s bollocks on the skirt score and I’ve seen him take three or four birds back to his hotel room, but Grant did ok. He said he got the ones Hannah was finished with, ha, ha.’

‘How do you feel now,’ Walters asked, ‘with three members of the band dead?’

Henderson looked at his eyes to make sure his facial expressions matched the words coming out of his mouth, as for the first time he could see the possibility of a motive developing. Here was a hardened criminal who knew the band better than most.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t give a shit, if I’m being honest,’ he said, his intensive stare not wavering from her face.

‘Why not? You were friends once.’

‘Nah, you’ve got it all wrong. It was all business but these boys fucked me over big time, so don’t expect any sympathy from me.’

‘How do you mean they fucked you over?’

He shifted in his seat. ‘It’s all in the past. I don’t want to talk about it. No comment.’

The door opened and a young girl walked in. ‘Are you all right Grandad? I heard loud voices.’

She was perhaps twelve or thirteen, slim with lovely curly blonde hair and deep blue eyes. She possessed the makings of a beautiful girl, but the genes of the old codger sitting across from him were working against it.

‘No, no I’m fine love, it’s just adult talk.’

‘Well, you remember, you’ve got to watch your heart, the doctor told you not to get excited.’

‘Pah, what do doctors know? Anyway, there’s no chance of that happening. Now off you go Chrissie, there's nothing for you to worry about.’

‘Ok,’ she said. As she left the room she looked over at Henderson and gave him a scowl.

‘She’s my granddaughter in case you’re wondering. She’s staying with me while my stupid son sorts his fucking head out. He needs a new one if you ask me. Him and his wife have gone away for a few days to sort out their problems, so don’t you go away thinking I’m a peado. In any case, she’s going to her gran’s house tomorrow.’

For Chrissie, moving away from a problem with her parents to stay with him must have been like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. What sort of role model was this archetypal career-criminal Street supposed to be for her?

They talked for another ten minutes but Henderson advanced no further forward. Street seemed to be holding something back because when he asked again why he didn’t like the Crows, he stonewalled him.

He tried a different tack. ‘All four members of the band seemed to have done well after leaving the music business. Where do you think they got the start-up money? Everyone we’ve spoken to didn’t think they’d made much money from being in the band.’

Street’s face hardened. ‘What the fuck are you asking me that for? I don’t know anything about their money. How the fuck would I know? Now get the hell out, this interview’s over.’

The Anchor Bar in Shepherd’s Bush was the sort of boozer Derek Crow would ordinarily walk past. It reeked of faux old-world charm with acres of polished wood on the long bar and walls, windows engraved with the names and logos of brewers long gone, and serving beers from parts of Germany and Holland he and the other punters had never heard of. Tonight, the pub was filled with young city types gulping down a few jars before heading home to face a needy young wife, or imbibing a bit of Dutch courage to stomach another night alone in an empty bed-sit.

There were times in his past when any pub would do and he and the Crows must have been pissed in every large town from Cornwall to Aberdeen. Nowadays, he did most of his drinking at home or away on business, as he’d exorcised the wilder demons of his youth, and now enjoyed spending more time with his family, although at the moment, he didn’t venture out at all unless there was a burning necessity; like tonight.

Retired Chief Inspector Bill Paterson placed two drinks down on the table, a glass of the pub’s best red for him and a pint of bitter for the former ’tec.

‘I hope you don’t mind meeting me here Derek, but I didn’t think your office was the place for this sort of discussion.’

‘Needs must when there’s a murderer about, I say.’

Crow lifted his wine glass and took a large drink. Whoa, big mistake. It tasted sharp, acidic and alcoholic, a chemical taste overpowering any fruit or tannic flavours lurking underneath, giving the impression it was spirit masquerading as wine. It was too young to be drunk and yet another example of over-eager vineyard owners trying to make a buck before their wares were fit for market, selling to large corporations more interested in price and profit than a fine drinking experience.

‘What did you want to tell me, Bill?’ he said placing the wine glass down on the table with the same distaste he would with a vile bottle of cough mixture.

Paterson took a drink from his pint and made a loud, slurping noise, similar to the way he drank his tea. Perhaps he was drinking Yorkshire Bitter, or maybe he always behaved like a pig. He put the glass down, a good third of it missing, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The only things missing from this idealist peer into a beer-drinker’s heaven was a good burp and a noisy fart, but thankfully he passed neither. Instead, he removed papers from a well-worn folder.

‘At our last meeting, you asked me to go back and took a closer look at our three suspects, Dave Manson, otherwise known as Smelly Dave, Annaleise Quinlan and Mathew Street. I did surveillance on all three but came up with zilch initially, as Smelly Dave doesn’t do much all day and the lorry-driver husband of Annaleise Quinlan spends his time going back and forward to Spain with only a day or two at home. I then adopted a more direct approach with Street, and I think I’ve got something for you.’

‘Well done, Bill. Let’s hear it,’ he said, his voice full of enthusiasm.

‘When I met him the first time, I went softly softly, but on this occasion I laid down his record of violence in front of him and gave him a long list of his old confederates who’d all done time. I then accused him directly of having the means and the motive to kill your friends.’

‘Good. What did he say?’

‘He denied it, of course.’

Crow’s shoulders slumped at the news. ‘No surprises there.’

‘He said he was old, and sure he had grudges, but he couldn’t do anything about it now. So I said to him, if it’s not you doing it, how about one of your mates? He thinks for a bit and then he says, if I tell you I know something, what’s it worth?’

‘The wily old fox. He does know something!’

‘Easy Derek, the pub needs this table and glasses for tomorrow’s customers.’

He tried to calm down but couldn’t. ‘What did you do? I hope you bashed his fucking brains in so he would tell you.’

‘There’s a time for violence, for sure Derek, and I can’t say I didn’t feel tempted to land a fist or two on his wrinkled fizzer, but poke the old bugger too hard and we’d get nothing.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘I played it casual and talked money for a while as these guys always like talking about money in my experience. I then tried to find out how good his information is and so on and so forth, and the upshot is this. He wants fifty grand for telling you who’s behind it–’

‘Whoa! How do we…'

‘Hang on Derek, hang on and hear me out. He’s asking for fifty gees to tell you who killed the boys, but he’ll only do the exchange in person and wants you to come to his gaff because he doesn’t like travelling.'

Derek became distracted by a loud noise and looked around, and in his current nervous demeanour he half-expected trouble. A group of lads were laughing at some funny story, their numbers thinner than before now the call of a hot meal and the evening’s entertainment in front of the box beckoned.

He thought for a moment. It made sense for Street, a man who knew many criminals in the East End, to know what was going on and who might be responsible. When he’d known him, he would do anything if you crossed his hands with cash, and he wouldn’t put it past him to put the feelers out once he learned the Crows were dropping like last week’s novelty single.

‘Do you think that’s wise, to go to his place? I mean if he’s the guy behind the killings, I could be walking into the lion’s den.’

‘I don’t think he’s the guy, Derek, and give him a break, he’s a sixty-seven-year-old man, not a rabid Rottweiler.’

‘True.’ He mulled it over for a moment. Hell, what was the downside? Were they not friends at one time?

‘Sure let’s do it.’

‘Good man, I’ll fix it up. He says he doesn’t travel much but in a day or two he’s moving to Brighton for a week to house-sit his son’s place, so it’s likely you’ll meet him there.’

‘It’s better for me as I know where I am in Brighton, but I don’t have a bloody clue about Eastbourne.’

‘What about the fifty big ones?’

‘I’ll sort it out. I’d pay double to get my life back.’

He left the pub ten minutes later. His ‘minder’, Don Levinson, sat outside in the car, the big Jaguar engine purring hungrily with his hands on the wheel, ready for a quick getaway. Don was once in the Army and now doubled as a bodyguard, although he hoped his sedentary job as a driver these past few years would not count against him if some action suddenly kicked-off.

Despite the iffy surroundings of the pub and Paterson’s personal drinking habits, Derek had rather enjoyed his evening out. Maybe he was working too hard and needed to get out more. The pressure of building the business had never stopped since it started, with frequent twelve-hour days, weekend working and three weeks holiday. Now with the end of this terrible business in sight, he wanted to get away and clear his head of all the Crazy Crows stuff, mourn the loss of his friends without the added strain of watching his back. He made a decision. He would book a holiday just as soon as the meeting with Mathew Street was finished and any information he possessed had been handed over to the police.

Derek was born in South London, but from the age of eight grew up in Brighton. To his shame, he hadn’t been back there in a while, as the last couple of times he and Peter Grant had gone out on their boys night out, they went to London, and it would be good to see the old stomping grounds again, places where he’d spent the formative years of his youth. He remembered with affection the Hove dog track where he often won and lost his weekly pay check, the seafront where he lost his virginity to a sixteen-year-old girl called Natasha, and the North Laines where he lost his heart to a beautiful girl who worked in the shop where he bought his first guitar.

He tried to relax but his nerves were jangling, eager to do something, and for a moment he had been tempted to ask Don to stop the car and let him walk, but this part of London was as alien to him as New York or Calcutta, and instead he reached for his briefcase and opened it.

He pulled out a paper written by one of his marketing guys on how the company could use PR to improve the public’s perception of tanker drivers, after the bad press received from the recent pay dispute. According to a recent independent poll, the status of tanker drivers had fallen from their previous middling position to a place near the bottom of the heap, wallowing down in a dank basement and roped together with estate agents, tabloid journalists and bankers.

He looked up for a few seconds and recognised Circus Road, a street close to home. It was a wet, miserable night and the lights of oncoming cars were dazzling his eyes before the wipers caught the errant raindrops and brushed them away. The PR paper was still on his lap and for a few minutes he was mesmerised by the slap-slap of the wipers.

He was in a car, not a smart car like this Jaguar, but a Ford Cortina which had enough design clues to suggest its American parentage, but unlike its Yankee cousin, it was noisy, the seats were uncomfortable and for the most part, it was unreliable. He would be in the back with his younger brother, Barry, who was always a quiet kid but who could blame him, as their mother in the front passenger seat could talk for England in the loud booming voice she possessed. They were supposed to be reading, but instead, they were listening to her berating his weak and ineffectual father for something he’d done or more likely, failed to do.

The purpose of the trip was to see Aunt Beth and Uncle Harry, and just like his mother, her sister Beth could also talk the hind legs off a donkey. How they understood one another was a mystery, a spectacle he and Barry could only marvel at, as they both talked as fast as he could run and often at the same time

They were forced to sit in the front room and listen to the women go on about bunions, varicose veins, neighbours, useless husbands, cheeky children and the other banal minutiae of their lives, as they didn’t want to be alone with Uncle Harry. If they were sent outside to play, he would try to lure them into the shed with the promise of sweets and cake, but his big touchy hands made frequent grabs for your bum and balls while puffing heavy gusts of pipe tobacco into your face.

From the corner of his eye he spotted a car on the left coming towards them from a side street, but to his utter horror, it didn’t stop and rammed into the front of the Jaguar. He was jerked to one side, but instantly the seatbelt tensioned and half a dozen airbags came scooting out of the side panels to cushion the impact. When the car stopped rocking a few seconds later, he was amazed to find no broken bones or cuts; dazed and a bit confused but otherwise uninjured.

He leaned forward to ask Don if he was ok, when he shot out of the car and started berating the errant driver, a tall Middle Eastern bloke who wasn’t taking any crap in return. He could see where this might lead as Don was ex-Special Forces and didn’t take any prisoners, either here or in Afghanistan. He made a move to get out of the car and stop any needless bloodshed, in case Don suffered a PTSD flashback and mistook his antagonist for one of the mop-heads he used to bully and assault. All of a sudden, a strange face appeared at the passenger window.

God, he’d been stupid! This was it! Someone had staged this accident, and while everyone else was distracted by the fracas going on outside, the killer would sneak in here and bash his brains in. This would lead the police to think it had happened when he smacked his head on the back of the seat or something, but no, it wasn’t going to happen to him.

He reached into his pockets and then the side storage compartments of the car, but for what? He wasn’t carrying a gun or a knife so how was he supposed to protect himself from this madman; hit him with the London A-Z or an AA Routeplanner? The killer tried the rear passenger door but it seemed to be stuck, and the more it wouldn’t budge, the more the guy hauled at it. He needed to do something and quick!

He undid the seatbelt, pushed away the spent airbags and tried to climb into the front seat. It wasn’t easy as both seats were thick and topped with large head restraints, and he was a big man attempting to squeeze through a small space, but somehow he succeeded. No sooner had he taken his place behind the wheel when, in the rear view mirror, he spotted the killer making his way around the back of the car, heading for one of the doors on the undamaged side.

He started the car. The killer was alongside him now, shouting and banging the roof with his fist, his face locked in an angry stare, but he couldn’t hear what he was saying for the roar from the car’s over-revving engine and the ringing in his ears. He couldn’t seem to move the lever out of ‘Park’. He finally got it into ‘Drive’ and shot past Don, who looked up more in surprise than fright, as he had never seen him driving.

He edged past the damaged Toyota and without looking to see if the road was clear, hit the accelerator and sped off down the rain-streaked street.