Shooting Elvis (6 page)

The postman had smelled smoke and sent for the police and fire brigade. All we found of Mrs Tweddle and the easy chair she’d been sitting in was a pile of ash, a right foot and a left hand. She was identified by her wedding ring.

It made the nationals as another example of the mysterious phenomenon known as spontaneous human combustion. The papers were full of it, and the more lurid ones showed pictures of the poor woman’s remains. Eddie and his sergeant were interviewed by the press and credited with extravagant descriptions of the scene. They made great capital out of relating that one foot, one hand and the rest of the room were completely untouched by the conflagration, as if that were proof of strange forces at work.

I had a word with the fire chief and learned differently. In every recorded case of supposed spontaneous human combustion there has been a possible source of ignition close to the body – usually a cigarette or an electric fire. Mrs Tweddle was a smoker, and there was a three-kilowatt electric fire blazing away eighteen inches from her remains.

And
, the fire chief told me, we are composed
largely of fat. Particularly elderly women. Once ignited, we burn like a candle. Light a fire, he said, and let it burn out – doesn’t matter if it’s a bonfire or a campfire – when it is dead there will be the unburned ends of pieces of wood surrounding the ashes, just like Mrs Tweddle’s hand and foot. I made a statement at a press conference, expounding my newly found knowledge and
pooh-poohing
the spontaneous combustionists, and it was shown on
Look North
.

I found an Argos catalogue in Jeff’s drawer and looked at the price of mountain bikes. They were cheaper than I expected. Sonia was in a different league to me when we went out jogging. Sunday morning we’d driven to the park and I’d accompanied her on one three-mile circuit; then she’d done another one, much faster, while I waited in the car. Afterwards she’d suggested that in future she might even run the two miles back home. She’d bought a ledger and started entering her times and distances in it. Maybe a mountain bike would give me an edge, I thought.

John Rose and Dave came in together just as I finished the reports. We always appoint a report reader to scrutinise them and extract possible pertinent details, but I like to go through them myself, when I have a chance. We call it gatekeeping. They brought chicken and stuffing sandwiches in with them, and we had a picnic in the big office.

‘Find anything?’ I asked Dave after he’d supplied me with a mug of tea.

‘Not much. Jeb Smith and Son is now run by the son, Jeb junior, who just happens to have a degree in physics. And it’s a recycling centre, not a scrap yard. He’d just started working for his dad back in the early Nineties, and he couldn’t be sure but he suspects that they were taking stuff from Ellis and Newbold’s. He certainly remembers the company, but no names. He admits that things were a bit shady in those days. Unfortunately his father is dead, so we can’t ask him, but it did mean that young Jeb spoke more freely.’

‘Fair enough. It was worth a try. Have another word with him when he’s had time to think about it. What have you found, John?’

‘I’m not sure. The landlord at the Coiners, up on the tops, thinks Alfred and another man may have been in once or twice a couple of weeks ago. They sat in a side room, so the landlord couldn’t see him clearly, but a couple of his regulars may have. Unfortunately I was a bit early. He said they don’t come in until about two, and I didn’t think you’d want me hanging about in licensed premises for another couple of hours.’

‘No, we couldn’t have that. Are you happy if Dave and I have a ride up there and talk to the regulars? I need some fresh air.’

‘No problem. I’ve plenty to do.’

I looked at my watch and then at Dave. ‘Fifteen minutes, Booboo. OK?’

He tipped me a wink. ‘Ready when you are, Yogi.’

There was a note on my desk from Eddie Carmichael saying that he’d arranged to go to the indoor shooting range to keep his firearms authorisation up to date. About half of us are authorised firearms users, but I’m not one of them. I threw the note in the bin and rang High Adventure. Sonia was staying in her own house through the week, because my hours were uncertain. We chatted for a while and I said I’d drive over that evening if I didn’t finish too late. She told me she was doing some speed work on the track at Huddersfield after she finished, but she’d be home by seven. Earlier in the day she’d climbed the ice wall at the centre, one of the girls in the office was pregnant, some celebrity from local TV had been practising her snowboarding all morning and did I want a new fleece from Tog 24 because they were having a sale?

‘Wait! Wait!’ I interrupted when she paused for breath. ‘I’ve work to do. Tell me all about it when I see you.’ I put the phone down feeling ridiculously happy, like I always do after I’ve spoken to her.

We drove to the Coiners in my car. The pub is a relic from the days when stagecoaches and packhorses roamed the hills, carrying wool and cotton and finished goods from town to mill and
mill to town. Not much has changed since then, including the plumbing. I glanced round, taking in the obligatory sales rep on his way between the two counties; and the middle manager out with one of the typists, somewhere off the beaten track. I ordered two halves of Black Sheep and explained to the landlord who we were.

Tom and Francis were two brothers who lived in a farmhouse a few hundred yards from the pub. Every lunchtime they drove there in an old van, taking turns behind the wheel so one of them could overindulge, and had the landlady’s special. In the evening they came again and played cribbage for pennies. I didn’t dwell on what they might do for the rest of the time.

‘Aye, that’s ’im,’ Tom assured us, after Dave showed him the photo of Armitage’s dead face. We’d explained who we were and asked them about any strangers they’d seen in the place two or three weeks earlier. Two interlopers into their snug little back room, with its tobacco-stained walls, flypapers and beer-ringed tables, was quite an event. They remembered them well. One was tall, they said, with a long, unhappy face and bushy hair; the other one, unfortunately, was more ordinary.

‘Aye, that’s the one,’ Francis confirmed, when Tom passed him the photo.

‘But what about the other one?’ Dave asked. ‘What did he look like?’

‘Sort of…ordinary,’ we were told.

‘How tall?’

‘Not very. Well, not as tall as you. A bit stocky, you might say.’

‘How old?’

They looked at each other. ‘Forty-ish?’ one of them suggested.

‘Aye, forty-ish.’

‘Or mebbe a bit older. Not as old as us. Or you.’

‘Thanks. What was he wearing?’

‘And he was wearing one of these cycling helmets; the type with the long tail at the back for streamlining. Sitting there as large as life, having his dinner with this thing on his head.’ Eddie Carmichael turned when he realised we’d walked into the room. ‘Hi, guv,’ he said in his offhand way. ‘I’m just telling them about Eric Smallwood. Boy, did you set me up with him. If he’s OK in the head I know where there’s a big house full.’

Everybody calls me Charlie. I encourage it. Except when somebody of a more senior rank is present, of course. But we’re a team, and I know that every one of them would risk his or her neck for me, and I for them. Except Eddie. He rarely uses my name, which is his problem, but there was something about the way he said ‘Hi, guv’ that I didn’t like, as if being on first names was a step too far for him, like prostitutes never kissing their clients. Besides, ‘guv’ is a Met expression; we don’t use it up here.

‘How did the shooting go?’ I asked, making a gun shape with my hand.

‘No problems,’ Eddie replied. ‘The King can safely be laid to rest.’

‘The King?’ I queried.

‘Elvis,’ he explained, and smiles were exchanged around me.

‘Right,’ I said, not having a clue what he was talking about. There were some things in the department that I wasn’t party to. ‘I take it you passed,’ I added.

‘With flying colours.’

‘Good. I’m sure we’ll all sleep more soundly in our beds for knowing that. Did Smallwood give you a list?’

‘Right here.’ He handed me a foolscap sheet with a list of names in minute handwriting covering the top three inches. ‘What a fucking tosspot,’ he went on, now addressing his audience again. ‘And he has this big Scalextric track in his front room. Biggest you’ve ever seen. He sits there all day, with his helmet on, pretending he’s Michael Schumacher. What a fucking tosspot.’

Dave said, ‘What difference does it make what he does in his own home? He’s not hurting anybody. Maybe he does have a thin skull.’

Eddie spun towards him, eyes wide, hackles crackling with static. ‘Who rattled your cage?’ he demanded.

‘I joined the police to protect people like him from bullies and bigots,’ Dave stated. ‘Maybe he is a bit weird, but that’s not against the law.’

‘Who are you calling a bully and a bigot,
Constable
?’ Eddie replied, easing himself off his chair. John Rose started to whistle and looked towards the window. Somebody else coughed and said, ‘More tea, vicar?’

‘If the boots fit…’ Dave responded, pulling his legs under him.

‘Hold it! Hold it!’ I interrupted, extending an arm between them. ‘That’s enough.’ I pointed at Eddie, saying, ‘My office, now.’

I heard the scrape of his chair as he stood up and felt him follow me towards my little enclave in the corner. He closed the door and sat down.

‘Rule one,’ I told him. ‘When that outer door is closed there are no ranks in this team. Everybody has an equal contribution to make. OK?’

‘I’ll not take crap from him or anyone else,’ he replied.

‘You’ll have to. It’s the way we do business. Dave’s a good cop and a blunt speaker. Sometimes that’s what we need. You’re a bit like that yourself, so let’s try to rub along, hey? We don’t have time or room for personal animosities.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do.’

‘Will you be telling him the same?’

‘I certainly will.’ I stood up and opened the door
for him. As he walked away I shouted, ‘Dave. In here. Now.’

He came lumbering through the door and sat down. I spent a few seconds looking at a letter from a local councillor alerting me to the underage drinkers in one of the town centre hostelries, and a note from HQ about a collection for a memorial seat for some old superintendent who’d died at the age of ninety-nine. I did a quick calculation. If he retired at sixty then he’d drawn his pension for longer than he’d made contributions. That’s the way to do it. I placed the notes side by side and turned to Sparky.

‘Did you know about this giant Scalextric?’ I asked him.

‘Never saw it,’ he replied.

‘What are we going to do about it?’

‘I think we’d better check it out, don’t you?’

‘Mmm, first excuse we get.’ I handed him the notes. ‘Stick these on the board, please; any contributions to me. Now look suitably chastised and keep out of Eddie the Lip’s way.’

Maggie’s team of door-knockers had come up with something. Alfred’s next door neighbour, an elderly curtain-twitcher with a penchant for
Songs of Praise
on television, had heard Alfred’s front gate creak just as the choir was breaking into ‘Oh Lord We Heard Thy Trump On High’. She’d leapt to her feet as fast as her arthritic knees would allow but had failed to see the visitor. He’d knocked
briskly on the door and Alf had answered and quickly allowed the visitor in.
Songs of Praise
started on BBC1 at five-forty. The neighbour had heard a vehicle drive slowly by a few minutes earlier and park briefly in the street before almost immediately driving off. It was, she said, a small white van. Now Maggie had found residents two streets away who had seen a strange white van left there for an hour or so, Sunday teatime. Nobody saw the driver.

‘He’s our man,’ I told her. ‘No doubt about it. He drove by to see if Alf was in, or to simply check the address, then left his van where it would be away from the scene of the crime and attract less attention. Are there grass verges near where he was parked?’

‘’Fraid not, boss,’ Maggie replied. ‘The verges have been made over with green tarmac.’

‘Damn. We won’t get anything from them. OK. So go back, get the names of everybody in the street from the electoral roll and interview every man, woman and child. In fact, borrow a white van and park it in the spot. It might jog someone’s memory. Pick your team and get on to it first thing. Anything else?’

‘Mmm,’ she replied. ‘I’ve tracked down Mrs Newbold.’

‘Of Ellis and Newbold’s fame?’

‘That’s right. Ellis was only part of the company for a couple of years, when it first started, just before the First World War. Alvery Newbold bought him out and the company eventually came
to his son, Percival. Percy died in 2000, two years after the company closed. His wife is called Josephine and she lives in Leyburn.’

‘Leyburn,’ I exclaimed. ‘I thought they lived in Spain.’

‘She came back. Apparently their daughter is a GP in Leyburn.’

‘Blimey, I bet she finds it bleak up there after the Costas. You’ve done brilliant, Maggie, just brilliant. I’ll have to talk to her. Do you want to come with me or are you happy door-knocking?’

She winked at me and pulled the door open. ‘I’d only cramp your style,’ she said.

As soon as she went out Eddie jumped up and came in. I was reading Maggie’s notes and transferring Josephine Newbold’s address and phone number into the murder log book. I gestured for him to sit down. When I’d finished I said, ‘Maggie can put a white van in the next street at teatime on the Sunday in question. It looks like our man’s. And she’s tracked down Mrs Newbold, wife of the proprietor of the company.’

‘Great,’ he replied. ‘I always said that stills have their uses. They’re good at that sort of thing.’

I threw my pen on the desk, exasperated, saying, ‘Do you do it deliberately, Eddie, just to annoy me?’

‘What, guv?’

‘You know what, and cut out this guv business.’

‘Sorry, guv. I mean, boss. It’s just that I haven’t time for this political correctness stuff.’