Wages of Sin (10 page)

‘Three killings in the last year which look similar to this one. Prostitutes killed with a piece of rope or something similar, taken from behind and killed within seconds. Not conclusive. I'm getting further details from the investigating officers involved and keeping an open mind.'

Tucker sighed. He had thought of this as a sordid, straightforward crime and hoped for a swift arrest and a trumpeting on his part of a rediscovered efficiency. ‘Any other thoughts?'

‘Just one, sir. This one could be related to those other killings in a different way. It could be a local after all, wanting us to think this was done by someone who's killed previously in other parts of the country.'

‘A copycat killing?'

‘Precisely, sir. I knew you'd have the phrase for it.'

David Strachan enjoyed his modest meal at the Happy Eater, lingering over his mixed grill, reading the paper his nervousness had prevented him from studying earlier in the day.

He'd got the contract: that was the main thing. He was pretty sure that his Sales Director back in Birmingham hadn't thought he could get it. And if he hadn't, he'd have been out on his ear. No one had said so, but when you'd been in this game as long as he had, you could read the signs. He was safe for a year now, in all probability. Well, six months, at least.

He'd had to cut his commission precious hard to clinch the sale, but it was well worth it. And he'd make it up on other jobs, now that the pressure was off him. You couldn't sell well when you weren't relaxed: those pricks at head office should realize that. But you couldn't tell those people anything. Experience counted for nothing, these days.

He didn't want to move out of the bright warmth of the eating place into the cold and damp of the night outside. He treated himself to a custard tart, went and ordered a second coffee when he thought he caught the girl behind the counter looking at him impatiently. She had good breasts, tight behind her uniform, the way he liked them, and a cheeky smile that said she knew what he was thinking when he looked at them and almost touched them as he reached out for his change.

It was good to feel randy. He'd had too many anxious days lately to enjoy the pleasure of a little harmless lechery with his meals. Perhaps he should celebrate what he had done today. It would cost him, because he always seemed to have to pay for it these days; that old idea of the commercial traveller who put it about a bit was long out of date, as far as he could see.

But what he'd achieved against the odds in that printing company merited a reward. Some woman was going to be lucky tonight! David Strachan felt a stirring within his loins which deserved to be sated properly. He went into the gents and washed his hands and face. He slicked back the thinning hair and gave his teeth a quick scrub with the brush he kept always in the pocket of his car coat. No harm in offering a woman a little hygiene, even if you were paying her for her favours.

He'd been coming to Brunton for years, so he knew where to look for what he wanted. He drove his car slowly along the street below the park. But not too slowly: there was no point in risking being picked up for kerb-crawling. A girl had died near here less than a week ago, so the police would be vigilant.

He saw what he wanted quickly enough. Blonde and buxom. He liked them buxom, liked a good handful of what you were paying for. She gave him a nice smile and looked keen for his custom. That was good enough for him, even if she looked older than he'd taken her for when he'd first seen her.

It was a meeting of like minds: he was eager for a woman, and Sally Aspin was eager for a customer. She was out early, knowing that some of the girls were wary after that girl had been killed on the game last week. Sally knew she couldn't afford to be choosy, at her age, knew that she must bring in the punters or be banished from the streets by Joe Johnson.

‘Give you a good time, love!' she assured David Strachan huskily as he looked over the goods.

‘You bet you will! And
you
won't be disappointed either!' He looked up and down the street, then clapped her hand on his rampant weapon.

Sally gripped the familiar object as it thrust against the familiar zip. ‘Let's get moving, big boy!' she hissed throatily into what seemed a pleasingly clean and odour-free ear. She wasn't going to fluff lines as easily learned as this one.

He didn't disappoint her. Not with the sex: Sally Aspin had long since learned to set her sights very low indeed on what happened under the sheets. But this man was a good customer, very nearly the ideal one. He paid her the money without argument before he started. He laid his clothes neatly across the chair she indicated to him, only prevented from folding them by the urgency of his desire. He didn't demand anything kinky, though she would have done whatever he wanted, within reason.

He grasped her hard, even passionately, but not roughly enough to leave any serious bruises. He murmured gratifying things about her bum and her breasts. And he came quickly and efficiently when she commanded him to with a couple of four-letter words, without needing any of the blandishments she had sometimes to employ to ensure orgasm and full delivery.

And when she said three minutes later that it was time for him to go unless he wanted to pay double for all night, he rose obediently and went to wash himself in the tiny bathroom.

It was only when he was getting dressed that he said something odd. ‘One of you girls was killed last week, wasn't she?'

‘Yes. Slip of a kid. Didn't know what she was about. Didn't recognize the danger signals, I expect.'

‘Nasty business. Meet a lot of violence, do you, Sally?'

She'd given him her name in the hope of further custom. Now she began to wish that she hadn't. ‘Not a lot. There are some vicious buggers about everywhere, though, aren't there, nowadays?'

‘There are indeed.' He stroked her plump shoulder for a moment as she put on her bra, and she managed not to flinch away from the touch.

‘At least your hands are warm!' she said and took his fingers between hers, passing her lips softly across them for a second. The punters were entitled to call the tune, but he'd had what he'd paid for now, and she was conscious that she wanted to change the subject of this conversation.

‘Never been one for violence myself,' he said, his hand lingering for a moment on her wrist as he stood ridiculous with his trousers around his knees. ‘But I suppose a little bit of brutality has a certain attraction, when it's combined with sex.' He looked at her in the big mirror she had fixed to the wall beside the bed for those with a taste for such things, trying to will her into assent.

‘Want a bit of Miss Whiplash, do you, love?' she said mockingly, handing him his jacket. He hadn't given her his name, and you never asked for information: that was part of the code.

He grinned at her, but said nothing. He was at the door before he spoke again. Then he lifted his arms to her shoulders and said, ‘You're a very desirable woman, Sally. And there's plenty of you. I like that. Perhaps I'll be back for a bit of Miss Whiplash. Might even bring Mr Whiplash along for the ride!'

He had vanished into the night before she could find any words of refusal.

P
ercy Peach for once did as Tucker suggested. He went and talked to one of the longest established flashers on his patch.

He didn't for a moment think that Billy Bedford had killed Sarah Dunne, but he wanted information. And Billy Bedford was a voyeur as well as a flasher. He was out on the meaner streets of Brunton on most nights, looking for a bit of cheap entertainment to light up his hopelessly shabby life.

Billy lived with his aged mother, a woman whom Percy had got to know over the years of her son's shame, a woman for whom he had affection as well as pity. ‘He's in trouble again, Mrs Bedford!' said Percy, shaking his head sympathetically at the old lady in the rocking chair. He was conscious of Billy hovering with hands clasped at the edge of the room; it gratified Peach to see the anxiety which the man had exhibited from the moment he saw Peach in the doorway of the tiny terraced house stepped up another notch.

‘I never set foot outside the 'ouse! Me mum'll tell you that!' The wheedling denial came automatically from the thin lips.

Percy swung to look at him. ‘Too quick, Billy Bedford! I haven't said which night I was interested in yet. Makes me feel you already know which night it was, that you've got something very nasty to hide, that does.'

Mrs Bedford said, ‘He's not a bad lad, really, Mr Peach. He's good to his old mum, in his own way, is Billy.' She looked at the Chief Inspector appealingly, with her head on one side and her small bright eyes fixed on him like those of a hungry sparrow. It was a long time since Percy had seen someone with her arms and shoulders invisible beneath a thick blanket of woollen shawl. He wondered how many of those shawls she had gone through since she had worn her first one and clattered in her clogs to the mill, during and after Hitler's war.

‘I'm glad to hear he's good to his mum, Mrs Bedford. Because he's got precious few other virtues. Where were you last Friday night, Billy?' He rapped the question into the man's face with a sudden switch.

Billy Bedford was a pathetic rather than a dangerous creature. Peach realized that he had rarely if ever seen him before in natural light. It didn't improve the man. His cheap green shirt was grubby at the neck and had a button missing. The diamond patterns on his cardigan had long since faded and there were holes in the sleeves and food on the front of it. He ran a hand automatically through his thinning, greasy grey hair at every challenge which was offered to him.

But Bedford had endured many hours of police questioning, during dark nights on the streets and under the harsh artificial glare of police interview rooms. He forced the fear from his watery grey eyes, made them carefully blank, and said, ‘Can't remember where I was last Friday, it's almost a week ago. But I ain't done nothing, Mr Peach, 'onest I ain't.'

Peach could have terrified him into submission, easily enough. But he didn't want a mother in her eighties to see her son at his most abject. He shook his head at Billy and turned back to the old lady. Without taking his eyes from her face he opened the briefcase at his side and drew forth a bottle of Guinness, producing with the action a delighted glint in those aged sparrow eyes. ‘Glass please, Billy,' he said.

He poured the black stout with elaborate care into the dimpled tankard Billy brought from the scullery, tilting the glass expertly to avoid too frothy a head, setting it at length upon the table beside her. ‘Where was he, Mrs Bedford?'

‘He was out, I expect. He usually is, on a Friday, once he's watched
Coronation Street
with his old mum.' She took a long sip at the Guinness, without lowering the level very much; she was going to make it last, this black gold. Then, as if the magic draught had made her more acute, she wiped her withered top lip, leaned forward and said, ‘'Ere, it wasn't Friday when that girl was killed, was it?'

‘We think it might have been, Mrs Bedford. Though we haven't released the information to the press yet. So you're ahead of the
Evening Telegraph
this time, aren't you?'

She looked at the dishevelled copy of the evening paper beyond her tankard on the table and giggled delightedly. Then her eyes narrowed. ‘But you're not saying my Billy had anything to do with that, are you?'

‘My chief thinks he might have, I'm afraid.' He registered the son's alarm out of the corner of his eye with satisfaction. ‘But between you and me, Mrs Bedford, I don't believe Billy has it in him to kill anybody. His best policy would be to come clean and give us all the help he can.'

She digested this for a moment. Then the sparrow's head nodded as abruptly and repeatedly as if it was attacking a worm. ‘You 'ear what Mr Peach says, son. Better give 'im all the help you can, lad.'

‘I always do, Mum. Always try to 'elp the police. More than they ever do for me, that is!'

Peach grinned at him. ‘Very touching, Billy, I'm sure. Well, if you want to keep Chief Superintendent Tucker off your back, you'd better answer every question I ask you as honestly and completely as you can. I know that will be breaking the habit of a lifetime, but believe me and believe your mum, it will be much the best thing.'

Bedford looked from one to the other, the idea of telling the truth filling his eyes with apprehension; he looked like a rabbit caught in the glare of a headlight. The stench of his breath swept into Peach's face, but the DCI didn't flinch: his eyes bored into the frightened features as though they would be taken apart if he didn't get the truth. He repeated with soft menace, ‘Much the best thing, Billy.'

‘All right. I was out, like Mum says. But I didn't see anything, honest I didn't.'

‘Looking for a quick flash, were you, Billy? Bit cold for that, in November.' Peach kept his eyes on the thin, wretched face, though he was aware of the old lady shaking her head sadly as she sipped her Guinness.

‘No. I've given all that up, Mr Peach.' He took a big breath. Telling the truth to the police required a tremendous effort of his puny will. ‘I was just walking around. Trying to enjoy what I saw.'

‘And what did you see, Billy?'

The old lady looked at her son with distaste. ‘He watches the tarts, don't he? Watches them flashing their legs to excite those who pay them. Always one for a free show, weren't you, Billy?'

Peach wondered what childhood excesses she was recalling to this disaster of a son. Had he peeped through the bedroom keyhole at the performance of his long-dead father? He said hastily, ‘Watching the tarts on Friday, were you, Billy?'

‘I might have been. All right, I did, for a bit. They show their suspenders, you know, Mr Peach! Sometimes you even get a flash of their pants, if you're in the right place and they have to lead the punters on a bit!'