Only a Game (6 page)

‘I've been waiting for hours for you to bring me up to date on things!' said Tucker aggressively. He had never come to terms with e-mails, and with only around two years between him and a fat pension, he didn't see why he should begin now.

‘In the crown court all morning, sir. Trying to side-step a smart young lawyer who was hamming it up for all he was worth to a receptive jury. The verdict wasn't in when I left, but my money's against a custodial sentence for Len Jackson.'

‘And they call it bloody justice!' said Tucker. For a moment, these two very different men were united in the traditional police contempt for lawyers who are concerned only with a personal victory, at whatever cost to the justice they purport to serve. It was like Christmas Day football between the trenches in 1914, thought a startled Peach.

He hastened to resume normal hostilities. ‘There was another serious disturbance in the town centre last night, sir.'

‘You need to get a grip on these things,' said Tucker, trying through his vagueness to sustain the hostility he thought necessary for Peach.

Percy noted the attempt at aggression with some relief. ‘I try to maintain a grip, sir, even with the system stacked against me.' He waited for a reaction which did not come. ‘I managed to get myself directly involved in this incident, even though it was my day off. You wouldn't care for a little direct involvement yourself, sir? A little confrontation with the thugs across the table in the interview room, for instance? See if you could abash them with your rank, sir?'

Tucker shook his head with a sudden, unaccustomed decisiveness. ‘I couldn't possibly do that, Peach. It is my policy to keep an overview of things, as you know. I'm the general behind the troops, if you like.'

As far behind as a first world war general, thought Percy. He said mysteriously, ‘Rather like the opening shots of the film of
West Side Story
.'

Tucker's jaw dropped an inch and a half, making him look like a slow-learning goldfish. It was a familiar phenomenon, but always a welcome one to Peach. ‘Where the helicopter zooms in over New York and eventually focuses on mob violence in the poorer quarter, sir. Gets an overview of the violence, as you do. Puts it in its wider context.'

‘Yes! Yes, that's what I have to do!'

‘Without getting involved, sir.' Peach continued ruminatively, as if the other man had not spoken. ‘Without contributing anything useful to a dangerous and deteriorating situation.'

Tucker didn't like the way this was going. ‘I hope you're not trying to fob me off with old films instead of getting on with your job and sorting things out, Peach. I can't see what cameras in helicopters over New York have to do with violence in modern-day Brunton.'

‘Mob violence, sir. Young men and an increasing number of young women who divide themselves into ethnic groups and threaten one another's very lives, sir.'

‘Then get on with sorting it out. And don't fob me off with
West Side Story
, which has nothing to do with it.'

‘You're probably right, sir. Except that apparently the starting-point for last night's little skirmish was a liaison between a white Brunton boy and an Asian girl. A Pakistani girl who went to school with him and has spent all but the first year of her life in the town. I thought there were certain parallels with the Puerto Rican girl in
West Side Story
. Or with
Romeo and Juliet
, for that matter. But I suppose I always was a hopeless romantic, sir.'

The vision of Percy Peach as a romantic would have been a startling concept to the criminal fraternity of the town or even to his juniors in the CID section. It was a totally baffling one for Thomas Bulstrode Tucker. He transformed himself from goldfish to Rottweiler by shutting his mouth and glaring balefully at his chief inspector. ‘Tell me what the hell's been going on.'

‘Nasty confrontation between two gangs last night, sir. Escalating when I arrived on the scene. Three of our junior uniformed constables were attempting to control the situation but were heavily outnumbered. One of them was knocked down and narrowly escaped serious injury.'

‘He should have known how to handle himself. He shouldn't have got involved without—'

‘Young woman, sir. Very nearly trampled underfoot.'

‘A woman?' Tucker was a fish again, goggling at the existence of this mysterious creature.

‘A third of constables are female, sir. On your orders, we're no longer allowed to refer to them as WPCs.'

‘They shouldn't have got involved with these thugs.'

‘No, sir. I'm sure you wouldn't have got involved, sir.' He paused to nod pensively. ‘But inexperience leads to strange actions. I might well recommend an official commendation in this case.'

‘There's no need to go over the top, you know. I'm simply pointing out that these junior officers should have followed official procedures. They should have called for back up before they went in.'

‘And I should probably have continued my journey and left them to it. Fortunately, they
had
called for back-up. The cavalry arrived just when the situation was getting sticky. The prompt and courageous intervention of these young officers had prevented an escalation of violence and probable serious injuries. The arrival of the back-up they had called for not only saved our bacon but enabled us to arrest three of the ringleaders.'

Tucker realized that he'd been set up but, as usual with this adversary, couldn't quite pin down the moment. He thought again about the dressing-down he'd endured that morning from the CC and divined there might be a gleam of comfort here after all. ‘You say this incident was racially motivated?'

‘One gang was certainly Asian, sir. The other one was extreme right and extreme white.' He glanced at his chief to see if he appreciated this turn of phrase and then went hastily on. ‘There were at least two National Front members. They recognized me from previous encounters and made themselves scarce.'

Tucker was too full of his own thoughts to pay much attention. He jutted his chin towards some invisible presence behind Peach. ‘We should make an example of these thugs! I was talking to the CC only this morning about the number of such outbreaks which have gone unpunished. Percy, I want you to throw the book at these people!'

Peach usually took the use of his first name by his chief as a danger signal, but this time he scented the prospect of further mischief. ‘This could be a big one, sir. They not only carried potentially lethal weapons but attempted to use them.'

‘Have you a reliable witness?'

‘Very reliable, sir. In my opinion, the most reliable of all. I have to confess to a little bias, but—'

‘Who is this person?'

Percy resisted the temptation to take an elaborate bow and sweep his knuckles across the expensive carpet. ‘It is I, sir! I am the man who arrested this dangerous ruffian who was brandishing a knife at the time. Nearly broke his arm doing it, and I was glad to hear the police siren which meant that the cavalry were arriving, but I have to say that—'

‘You didn't use unreasonable force, did you?' Tucker's pusillanimous soul quailed before the vision of unwelcome headlines.

Peach, not unreasonably, looked a little hurt. A better man than Tucker might have made the safety of his officer his first thought, might even have congratulated him upon his crucial intervention in a nasty situation. But the prospect of alarming his chief was stronger in Percy than any dismay. ‘Nearly broke the bugger's arm, sir. Sorry I didn't, in many ways.'

‘Put such thoughts right out of your mind, Peach. I don't want to have to defend the actions of anyone in the CID section.'

‘Even when an excited young thug had a knife against his throat, sir? Even when a young female officer was in danger of losing her life?'

Tucker brightened a little. ‘I suppose that does put rather a different complexion on it.'

‘I'm glad to hear it, sir.'

‘Yes. If you can assure me that there's no serious damage, I think we can overlook the—'

‘Glad to hear it, sir.' Peach was breathing rather heavily, but the man behind the big desk did not notice his struggle to retain his self-control. Percy said between clenched teeth, ‘Do you wish to interrogate these suspects yourself? I think we have a cast-iron case against them.'

Irony was wasted on Thomas B. Tucker. ‘No. No, I shan't interfere. You must do that yourself, Peach. You are the one who knows exactly what happened.' He sat suddenly bolt upright. ‘And make sure you throw the book at them. We must stamp out violence on our patch. I'm right behind you on this!'

‘Where you always are, sir. Where I knew you would be.' Then Percy allowed himself to catch some of his chief's enthusiasm. ‘We'll nail them for this one, sir! They'll squirm a bit before they get out of the interview room, I can tell you. I'll let Messrs Ahktar and Malim know exactly how you feel about them!'

Tucker, who had risen to his feet to send his chief inspector away with a ringing declaration of his support, was suddenly frozen in horror. ‘Aren't those – aren't they – Muslim names?'

‘That's right, sir. You're on the ball as usual. I'll let these Pakistani thugs know that the Head of CID is going to throw the book at them! That Chief Superintendent Tucker simply isn't going to allow violence on our streets! Thank you, sir, for this ringing endorsement of aggressive policing!'

‘But I thought you meant—'

‘Meant it was our white right-wing thugs? Well, no, sir. Not this time. It was their opponents with the blades, on this occasion. But never fear, sir, we'll have them for this. Without racial or religious prejudice, as always.'

‘This racial element puts rather a different slant on things, you know,' said Tucker, subsiding weakly into his big leather chair.

But his minion was gone, carrying the bright torch of battle without fear or favour into the ranks of villainy. Percy Peach, descending the staircase with a smile, noted a little lightening of the greyness, even a tiny patch of blue sky, over the grey roofs of Brunton.

Jim Capstick enjoyed driving the Bentley himself, when the occasion demanded it, as this one certainly did.

It was nice to have a chauffeur, of course. It enabled you to do a certain amount of work whilst you travelled, to prepare yourself for meetings. It allowed you to concentrate your thoughts on those meetings, rather than on the exigencies of traffic and the idiocies of other motorists. When you employed someone with the physique and background of Wally Boyd, you also had a bodyguard, in the now quite rare situations where that was necessary. Most important of all, it impressed people when a chauffeur dropped you off and then drove away to park the Bentley. Even the hard-headed people with whom Capstick did business, who should have known much better, were impressed, sometimes unconsciously, by a man who had his own resident chauffeur.

Nevertheless, Jim Capstick still enjoyed the occasional opportunity to savour at first hand the power of the five-litre engine beneath the Bentley's sleek bonnet. He enjoyed the chance of opening up that power on the dual carriageway which skirted the western side of Brunton, though even at seventy miles an hour he could scarcely hear the engine note. He enjoyed even more the swift, effortless acceleration which took him past three vehicles on an open stretch of the A59 towards Preston, catching glimpses of the drivers' startled faces as he surged so swiftly past them. A far cry this from his days in the second-hand Austin-Healey Sprite he had thought so dashing thirty-five years ago; he smiled at the memory of those exciting but more innocent days of his youth.

The section of the M6 between Lancashire and Birmingham is now the busiest and most frustrating section of motorway in Britain, but that suited Capstick's purpose. Anonymity was essential for this mission, not just desirable. This was not the right car for anonymity, of course, but he had planned things carefully to obviate that. Moving south in darkness amidst the dense traffic of the M6, you were just another vehicle, for everything moved at the same pace towards the next hold-up, and you were lucky to average fifty mph.

It would have been frustrating if you had been driving a long distance, but Capstick could afford to be patient, for he had only forty miles of this to endure. Not far into Cheshire, he swung off the M6 and ran for a little while along an A road, which seemed very narrow after the hubbub of the motorway. The bright, squat block of the Travelodge hotel was visible for a mile before he reached the entrance. Seeing someone else drive out, he slid the Bentley into a slot which was not easily visible and yet not far from the entrance.

He had more sense than to adopt the sort of theatrical disguise which made one noticeable rather than obscure. He merely donned the navy anorak he kept as cover for such occasions, not even putting up its hood, divining correctly that this would attract rather than divert attention in a context like this. He passed quickly through the reception area of the hotel, nodding briefly at the receptionist. If you knew where you were going, people rarely challenged you; most of them assumed you had already booked in for the night.

The other man in the lift scarcely glanced at him. British reserve ensures that most people treasure their own privacy. Most of them know that attempts at social exchange are not likely to be welcomed in a place like this, where every patron is strictly transient. For his part, Capstick studied the instructions about the operation of the lift and did not even glance at its other occupant.

There was no one in the corridor. He moved swiftly and silently over forty yards of blue carpet and rapped briefly on the door of Room 213. The man gave him a cursory greeting, then shut and locked the door carefully behind him. The room was furnished as were the other hundred and ninety rooms in this functional building. It had two single beds, built-in wardrobes, anodyne prints of flowers upon the walls, a door to the en suite bathroom. There were two small armchairs, which the occupant had moved to face each other at the end of the bed that would not be used.