Wages of Sin (3 page)

There was also a query from the custody sergeant as to whether he should release the four men being held in connection with an Asian/British National Party punch-up in the town centre early on Sunday night. ‘We've got to charge 'em or enlarge them, and their briefs are getting lippy,' that grizzled officer told him succinctly, and stood waiting for a decision.

‘Hold them a bit longer. I've got DCs out in the town trying to get witnesses to the violence,' said Tucker importantly.

‘The Asian brief's asking to see you, sir,' said the custody sergeant implacably. ‘Says if we're holding them any longer he wants to know the reason why, and he wants to hear it from the top man. Says if they're not out of the slammer by ten thirty he'll be claiming racial discrimination on behalf of his Paki clients.'

‘We can't have that,' said Tucker unhappily.

‘No, sir. Shall I tell that lippy lawyer you'll be down to tell him the reason why we're holding his men?'

Tucker squirmed in his big leather chair, stared unhappily down at the centre of his huge executive desk. ‘Let them go,' he said almost inaudibly.

‘Very well, sir. And what about these National Front lads? They're keeping shtum as yet, but they've got tattoos bigger than their IQs, if you ask me.'

Tucker mused unhappily, wondering how he could inject energy and enthusiasm into his troops. ‘What those cocky young sods need is a good grilling, Sergeant. They don't like being locked up, you know, and it makes them nervous in the end. They might even break down and confess, with skilled interrogation.'

‘Yes, sir. I can see that. Will you be down to question them yourself, sir?'

‘No, of course I won't. I've far more important people to be dealing with than petty thugs.' Tucker gestured vaguely at his vast expanse of empty desk.

The custody sergeant followed his gaze and paused. ‘All the experienced CID staff are out and about, sir, on your orders. The National Front brief's getting a bit stroppy as well, you see, sir. Bright young feller, unfortunately – knows that even thugs have their legal rights. He's been wondering aloud about whether some of their wounds might have been inflicted in custody, rather than in the fight last night. Even muttering about wrongful arrest, though I don't think he can make that stick. Don't suppose you'd care to have a word with him, sir? Put him right about the law and where he stands, from your detailed knowledge?'

‘No, I wouldn't. I'm far too busy to go tangling with young lawyers still wet behind the ears. Oh, I suppose you'd better let them go, if that's really the best we can do!' Tucker cast his eyes to heaven theatrically at the incompetence with which he was surrounded.

The custody sergeant went back down the stairs and did what he'd known he would do all along: he released the men involved in the weekend fracas with no more than an official caution. It was inevitable, without a better case to offer the CPS, but at least he had played it by the book and made Tommy Bloody Tucker take the decision.

It proved to be the wrong decision, from the Superintendent's point of view. When he saw the Chief Constable at eleven thirty, he was told that there was to be a firm policy on all racial violence. Trouble was to be nipped in the bud at source by decisive police intervention. ‘So let's make an example of these ruffians who got involved in last night's violence,' said the CC. ‘Let's show them who's in charge of this particular manor.'

Chief Superintendent Tucker had to confess they'd been released. ‘The custody sergeant was insistent,' he said. ‘I was reluctant to let them go, but I didn't think we'd enough for the Crown Prosecution Service to take on the case.'

This time it was Tucker who was on the wrong end of the bollocking. Chief Constables used phrases like ‘surprised and disappointed' and ‘marked decline in the efficiency of the CID section' and ‘very disturbing figures' rather than the more basic language further down the ranks, but both men realized that this was a severe bollocking.

When Tucker described it as such with a sickly smile, hoping for some conciliatory words to end the meeting, the CC responded with a curt, ‘That's good, then. A bollocking it is. At least we understand each other!' and dismissed him without a smile.

Chief Superintendent Tucker went back to his office and sat with his head in his hands. He was too upset even to do the calculations about his pension with which he usually consoled himself on such occasions. There were far too many days like this to endure before his retirement. They stretched away interminably before him in his imagination, like the rows of Banquo's heirs in Macbeth's vision of the future.

It was all very well his staff being obsequious, but there was no one around equal to the task of carrying him.

He was contemplating lunch when the news came in of a serious incident, a bank raid in Clitheroe. The masked gunmen had got clear away with a large but so far undefined sum in used notes.

There was also a body by the railway line in Pleasington, on the other side of Brunton: possibly a suspicious death.

Thomas Bulstrode Tucker swallowed his pride and reached for the phone. ‘Get me Chief Inspector Peach!' he said grimly.

The day was so gloomy that the early winter dusk was mingling with the night by the time the children got out of school at four o'clock.

The cars had their lights on and, as the boys came through the school gates, the street lights came on abruptly above their heads, making what little remained of the daylight even less apparent. There was a thin mist of drizzle in the air. It was a depressing evening, even for twelve-year-old boys newly released from the classroom.

Tommy Caton had his red hair cut very short. It had seemed a good idea at the time, almost as short as the cuts he saw on some of the footballers he watched on television, but now he felt a chill about the back of his scrawny neck that he could not acknowledge without losing face. On this bitter evening, he would have welcomed the balaclava helmet that his gran had knitted for him and which he had treated with such derision as soon as she had left the house.

He flapped his thin arms and tried to banish the cold by the energy he put into his shrill cries to his companions, as they trotted through the familiar streets towards home. There were a dozen of them at first, but the group became smaller as boys and girls peeled off at each street junction to go to their homes.

Tommy lived furthest from the school, and presently there were just he and Jamie Betts left, kicking a battered lager can to each other across one of the town's few remaining cobbled streets and pretending to be racing down the field for the Rovers. They had known each other for almost as long as they could remember, these two. They had gone through junior school together and been delighted to find themselves together in the same first-year class at the comprehensive.

A sour-faced woman at the door of one of the mean brick terraced houses called them noisy little beggars and told them not to play football in the street. Tommy picked the can up and they got to the corner before pulling horrid faces in concert at the closed door of the woman's house. They didn't shout anything: they were getting too near home to take risks.

Tommy dropped the can again when they got round the back of the houses, on a patch of unpaved ground where a mill had been felled and not yet replaced with new buildings. There was no danger of cars here. All they had to do was avoid the puddles of grey water in the potholes of the uneven surface. Tommy wove a swift path between the water with the can at his feet, shouting his own excited commentary: ‘And it's Damien Duff on the wing for the Rovers! He beats one man! He beats another! And he gets his cross in as he reaches the goal line!'

He flicked the ball at right angles as he came to the wall at the end of the waste ground, and Jamie Betts met it expertly on the half-volley, yelling, ‘Goooooaaal!' in that long drawn-out roar of triumph they shared with the crowd at the Rovers' matches on Saturday afternoons.

‘You put it over the bar!' said Tommy, panting with bright-eyed excitement from his sprint down the wing.

‘Top corner. Goalie had no chance. Nearly broke the net!' Jamie swung his right foot in happy remembrance of the strike. ‘Good as Alan Shearer, that one was!' They were too young to have seen the folk-hero with the Rovers, but they saw him still on television.

‘I reckon you just missed. It wouldn't have gone in there if you'd hit the goal,' said Tommy. He pointed towards the broken door of a decrepit hut in the corner of the site and the black hole where their tin had disappeared.

‘I was aiming for that!' claimed Jamie, with the prompt and shameless improvisation which comes naturally to twelve-year-old boys. But he already had a grasp of the diplomacy that could end arguments. ‘It were a smashing centre, though, Tom. Right on to my instep as I came in on goal.'

They went forward together to retrieve the can which had become a football. It was almost dark now, and Tommy Caton paused for a moment before ducking into the cave of blackness beyond the broken door. You couldn't say you were frightened by a bit of darkness: fear was for girls. All the same, he made sure that Jamie Betts was following him as he went into the hut.

Jamie was right when he claimed to have caught his shot just right. The can had gone well into the centre of the hut. They could see it gleaming dully as their eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom.

But there was something else, too. A sweet, heavy smell. Not a pleasant smell. The panting boys sucked the odour deep into their lungs, even as they gasped that they did not wish to do that.

There was something beyond them, against the rotting boards at the far end of the shed. Something which had human form, but which lay with its limbs oddly disposed upon the floor, as if it was not human after all, but some life-sized puppet which had been dropped here. It had a skirt, and legs protruding below the skirt which were lifelike, and yet had no life at all.

Tommy did not want to touch it. He saw a hand reaching out towards the thing in the dimness, and it took him an instant to realize that the thin fingers belonged to him. Those fingers were still cold, but the flesh they touched below the skirt was much colder: cold as any marble.

The boys found they were in each other's arms, clutching each other briefly for comfort in a way they would never have believed possible before they came upon this terrifying thing.

Then they were out of the hut, running frantically back across the derelict site and towards the sanctuary of the lights and the street beyond, their lungs screaming their terror at what lay behind them in the hut.

Their lager tin lay forgotten beside the corpse of Sarah Dunne.

‘C
ome in, Percy! Do sit down! Tell me how life has been treating you since our paths had to diverge.' The Chief Superintendent was at his most effusive.

Bloody 'ell, thought DCI Peach. He's calling me Percy. Better be careful here. Tommy Bloody Tucker wants something. He sat down cautiously in the armchair towards which Tucker had waved an expansive arm. ‘Can't grumble, sir. Variety is the spice of life, they say – especially police life.'

‘You're looking well, Percy, I must say. Very well.' Tucker eyed his man up and down as Peach regarded him warily from the other side of the big desk. Tucker wasn't used to seeing this man in uniform. The dark cloth emphasized the contrast with the white of Peach's round bald dome, which was also set off by the neat black fringe of hair around it and the jet moustache and eyebrows. The pupils in the eyes below those mobile eyebrows were almost black: they were Peach's most valuable asset in interrogations, those piercing black eyes. They seemed to penetrate the defensive armour of people who argued with him, but gave nothing away about the thoughts of the powerful, stocky man behind them.

‘I'm feeling well, sir. Very well. Happy with my lot in my new section. Carving out a new and better career path. And I trust you're well too, sir. Maintaining your usual perceptive overview of CID, I expect. Bringing your usual powerful presence to the direction of serious crime? I'm sure you are, sir. Of course, I'm not really in touch with CID matters, but I hear how things are going from time to time. Your reputation goes before you, as you might say.'

Thomas Bulstrode Tucker felt the interview slipping out of his control, even at this early stage. He had expected this bouncy little sod Peach to be desperate to get out of uniform and back into plain clothes and CID work, as people normally were. And here he was saying he was happy where he was. And making remarks about CID which were most suspicious.

Tucker peered over the gold-rimmed half-moon glasses he had donned for the occasion and tried to assert himself. ‘The CID section has been progressing pretty well without you, Percy. Going from strength to strength, you might say.' He tried not to notice the black eyebrows rising higher than seemed possible in the forehead beneath the bald pate. ‘However, I'm always looking to make a strong team even stronger. I like to think that's one of my virtues, not being content to sit upon my hands just because things are going well.'

‘No, sir. I used to tell the lads and lasses in CID in the old days, “Don't think the man upstairs is just sitting upon his hands, because he won't be.”' Peach nodded several times over this gnomic utterance, as if remembering old, forgotten, far-off things.

Tucker was thrown. ‘Yes. Yes, I see. Well, as I say, I want to reinforce my team. And I would regard you as providing that additional strength, Percy.'

‘Very gratifying, sir.' And it's still Percy, so watch your step here, lad, he thought. ‘I don't quite see my way to coming back to CID at this moment, sir.' He had been counting the days until he could get out of uniform and back to serious villain-taking, but he thought he'd keep that thought to himself.

Tucker's jaw dropped most gratifyingly. ‘But – but I thought you'd surely be grateful—'