Dusty Death (25 page)

‘Right. I'll make sure you—'

‘You won't see me again, Michael Allen. I don't deal with the likes of you.'

‘No. No, I wouldn't expect to—'

‘But I'll be watching you. Don't you worry about that. So don't you step out of line.'

He had never taken his eyes off the submissive figure against the dripping wall in front of him. He did not do so now as he nodded to the man behind his right shoulder. The man opened the boot of the Jaguar and bent to lift the box from inside it. The boot light gleamed unnaturally bright in the darkness around it, throwing the man's features into a goblin profile as he stooped and straightened again. He waited for another nod from Smith before he came forward and held out the box to the man with his back to the wall.

It was at that moment that hell broke loose.

Arc lamps flashed bright and blinding, throwing up the group by the Jaguar as if they were on a stage, freezing the cameo into stillness as the police sirens blared and the vehicles screamed in to block off the exit for the Jaguar.

There was a confusion of yelling voices, telling the men caught in the lights not to move, that armed police had their weapons trained upon them, that they should keep perfectly still. Seconds later, the three men who had so terrified Mike Allen were against the side of the Jaguar with their hands above their heads and their feet splayed, as expert hands ran up and down their bodies in search of weapons.

Mike slumped against the wall, scarcely realizing that salvation had come, scarcely hearing the torrent of oaths and obscenities pouring over him from Smith as he realized he had been betrayed.

The officer yelled into the man's ear that he was being arrested for attempting to supply illegal Class A drugs, that he did not need to say anything now, but that it might prejudice his defence if he failed to reveal evidence which he might later rely on for his defence in court.

All Mike was interested in was the strong police arms which held Smith in check as he tried to launch an attack on the exhausted figure in front of him.

It was only when the big frame was being arrested and flung into the back of the police Rover that Mike heard that his real name was Walter Swift.

February the twenty-ninth. A day of great significance, in the minds of some people.

Frivolous people, Lucy Blake told herself firmly. Forget all about the date and enjoy the evening, that was the best approach. It's not every day that Percy Peach takes you to a posh restaurant. She'd offered to go Dutch, but he'd rejected the suggestion, with a lordly wave and an expression wholly inappropriate for the delicate ears of a young lady. As Lucy had decided that at twenty-eight she was now no longer either young or a lady, she did not make even the attempt to blush.

She wondered whether to pretend that she had eaten duck à l'orange of this quality on many previous occasions, then rejected that idea also. Percy Peach had a disconcerting habit of seeing straight through any pretensions of that sort. More importantly, she was pleased to find that she no longer wanted to deceive him, that they had gone beyond the point where they played silly games of that sort with each other.

The silly games they did play with each other were much more enjoyable.

Percy seemed to be having to search much harder than usual for words. Perhaps the immaculate linen on the tables and the gleaming cut glass inhibited him. Or perhaps he was inhibited by the fact that at the beginning of the evening he had forbidden any shop talk, any observations on the baffling case of the murder of Sunita Akhtar.

Percy was at his most trenchant and most amusing when he spoke off the record about the suspects involved in a case. It was his involvement in his work which was one of the things which had attracted her to him, in the first place. Try finding that in the ten most important factors in a relationship, as listed by
Cosmopolitan
.

He kept filling up her glass with the Shiraz. It was a good one, and he even threatened to order another bottle. When she refused, he insisted on ordering brandies at the end of the meal. She shuddered to think what the evening was costing him. He can afford it, as a single man on a chief inspector's salary, she told herself firmly.

Peach lingered uncharacteristically at the end of the meal. He was usually far too impatient to spend more time than was strictly necessary over anything. Well, almost anything. You couldn't count sex: all men were prepared to spend inordinate amounts of time on that. But certainly food was not normally one of Percy Peach's major concerns. And this lingering, this running of his finger thoughtfully round the top of his glass, this series of soulful glances into her eyes over the latter stages of the meal, was quite untypical. Unnerving, in fact.

He said suddenly, ‘You've got very beautiful eyes, you know. Blue or green, according to the light. Or something between the two, a shade which can turn strong men's knees to water.'

‘Ultramarine,' she said dryly.

‘Is it?'

‘You told me all about my eyes the first time we went out. Ultramarine, you called them then.'

‘Did I really? I congratulate myself on that. I had great discernment, in those days.' He shook his head sadly, as if they were thirty rather than three years behind them. He'd be going in for the full nostalgia trip next, recalling their first, tentative advances to each other as if they had been Romeo and Juliet. It was all quite perplexing, especially when you hadn't much of a head for alcohol.

Lucy realized that weakness when the cold night air hit her outside the restaurant. Percy asked her, ‘Your place or mine?' as the taxi drew up. That was disconcerting, too. He normally had it all worked out, was looking forward with relish to the romp ahead of him, whether in her warm bedroom or in his freezing one.

Lucy looked up at the thin moon, caught the frost on the grass, and said firmly, ‘My place, I think!'

‘Much the best idea,' Percy agreed. ‘I like a woman who can take important decisions!'

He made it sound heavy with import, and it was so far from his normal attitude that she wanted to take issue with him. But he darted his mobile right hand straight to her thigh in the darkness of the back seat of the taxi, and she was soon giggling her way through much more familiar battles. Normal service had apparently been resumed.

Yet he was not as anxious as usual to get her into the bedroom. He accepted the offer of another coffee and sat in the big armchair looking through her CDs, making desultory conversation. He seemed to be at a loss until she mentioned the England cricket team, whereupon he enlarged at great length and with great expertise on the length of the England tail and the inconsistency of their bowling. Her mother would have loved it.

Lucy Blake wondered whether Percy was beginning to go off her.

That awful idea was quickly dispelled when they made their tardy retirement for the night. Percy held her at arm's length and looked soulfully into her eyes before they left the sitting room, an uncharacteristic delay at this particular moment. But once she began to undress, all was busy activity. She was reassured, even as she employed the nimble side-step which was a necessary skill during this part of the evening.

Percy seemed as usual to have at least two pairs of hands, both of them highly active. ‘You're a fetishist!' she told him breathlessly. ‘I've never seen anyone turned on so immediately by the sight of a pair of pants.'

‘I've always been into knickers,' Percy agreed happily. ‘Even more so since I got into yours!' Suiting the action to the word, he fell upon her with a warrior's whoop and deployed his four hands at the back and the front of the blue silk garment. ‘Now that's what I call a backside!' he said with a long sigh of pleasure. ‘I warmed my hands specially for this.'

‘You were always one to bowl a girl over with your consideration,' said Lucy, deciding that the line of least resistance was the only possible one here and making for the double bed she knew would soon be in disarray.

It was some time before Percy Peach said anything else. When he did, it was the mystic but simple ‘Bloody'ell, Norah!' which was his usual seal of approval on their carnal exchanges. It was warm and muffled, from somewhere beneath the bedclothes.

They had eaten and drunk too well and exercised too strenuously. At two thirty in the morning, Lucy Blake found herself staring at the ceiling and reviewing the curious events of the earlier part of the evening. Indigestion. She must be getting old: she needed a tablet.

It was a mistake. It was whilst she was stretching for her handbag beneath the bed that the man she had thought deeply asleep beside her fell upon the ample backside he had so admired and ravished her anew. For certain, his ardour was not diminishing.

She sank happily back upon her pillows. ‘Bloody'ell, Norman!' she murmured admiringly.

It was over the stark simplicity of the breakfast bar in her small modern kitchen that she puzzled herself again about the events in the restaurant on the previous evening. ‘You weren't your usual self, my man,' she said, as lightly as she could. ‘You were polite, even romantic. It's not your style.'

‘I'm a romantic at heart.' Percy stared bleakly at his muesli and imagined a full fry-up. ‘And I'm ten years older than you. I'm not allowed to presume.' On that gnomic utterance, he delved his spoon resolutely into his healthy cereal and ate.

‘Nearly ten years,' she corrected him. ‘And I didn't notice any decline in energy during the rest of the night.'

Percy smiled in spite of himself, looking rather like a schoolboy who has just received praise for getting his sums right. ‘Nevertheless, I am a modest man, Lucy Blake. I do not presume.' He sighed rather theatrically. ‘I'm disappointed, but not surprised. It's a pity, because I'm very fond of your mum – she talks a far better cricket game than you ever will. But there it is.' He sighed again and resumed his meditational munching of muesli.

An alarming thought gnawed its way into the back of Lucy's mind. ‘You're surely not saying that you expected me to – to propose to you?'

Percy gave the slightest of nods at the now empty bowl in front of him. ‘February the twenty-ninth, yesterday, weren't it, our Lucy?'

She loved the way he dropped into Lancashire talk for their most intimate moments. Loved the way he thought that it would be presumptuous for him to propose marriage to her. Loved the way that he had hoped she would take advantage of the date that came only once every four years to propose to him. Loved Percy Peach and everything he meant in her life.

Bloody'ell, Norah.

‘Wally Swift. Been looking for you for quite some time. In the deep doodoos, aren't you? The very deep doodoos.'

That thought obviously afforded Percy Peach deep satisfaction. He switched on the cassette recorder and announced that the interview with Walter Arthur Swift was beginning at 0912, with DCI Peach and DS Blake in attendance. ‘Expect you'll want your brief here for this.'

‘No. Nothing for a brief to do. I've been fitted up.' Swift knew the form. You said nothing. If the barons thought you were worth the effort, they'd make sure you had a lawyer, in due course. The best. Meantime, you kept shtum. It was more than your life was worth to name names, especially from anywhere higher up the chain. With luck, and a good brief in court, you'd get a hefty fine or a short custodial sentence for dealing.

All three of them in that warm cell of an interview room knew the score. They would all go through the motions, utter their well-rehearsed lines, and then he would be taken back to his cell and left there, whilst they struggled unsuccessfully to get more evidence against him, a better idea of the chain above and below him. That bastard Mike Allen had trapped him, but he surely couldn't know enough to get the big boys. It was a bloody nuisance, but these buggers couldn't touch the million and more that Wally Swift had stashed away in off-shore funds. There was nothing they could do about that.

Percy Peach was about to surprise him.

‘Best thing you can do is to be perfectly frank with us, Mr Swift. I don't expect you'll see it like that, but that doesn't worry me. I'll be quite pleased to hang a man like you out to dry.' Peach gave him a first smile, a dazzling of white teeth against the dull green of the room's walls.

‘I was fitted up. You Drugs Squad blokes are at it all the time. Surprised you think you can still—'

‘Not Drugs Squad, this, Wally. Mr Swift.' Peach managed to convey a sneer on what seemed a routine repetition of the surname. ‘Drugs Squad will probably have a go at you when we've finished. After you've been hung out to dry.'

Swift had been determined to play it cool, to let nothing ruffle him. He'd dealt with plenty of pigs before, knew their tactics in interviews. But now he was shaken. This man was changing the rules, before they'd even started. And he looked so smug, so confident. It was years since anyone had called him Wally; he would not have thought it possible that a single word could be so unnerving, but it seemed to have happened. He said aggressively, ‘No one hangs Walter Swift out to dry, Chief Inspector.' He tried to get the same kind of sneer into the title that Peach had visited upon his name, but he couldn't quite bring it off.

‘Sounds like a challenge, that, Wally.' He turned to the woman at his side. ‘Wouldn't you say that sounded like a challenge, DS Blake?'

‘It did to me, sir, yes. A very ill-advised challenge, in view of the evidence we've gathered over the last week.' She gave the man on the other side of the table a different kind of smile from Peach's, the sympathetic smile reserved by nurses for those disappearing to the theatre for serious surgery.

Swift was already regretting not having a brief. But it would be a climb-down to ask for one now. And Walter Swift did not do climb-downs. Another mistake.

He said, ‘I've issued no challenges. I'm here on a trumped-up charge of dealing drugs.'