Dying Fall (25 page)

‘Maybe it would,' Woodend agreed. ‘But it's a question of balancin' one risk against another. I don't want another tramp to die, but I don't want one of my team battered to death, either.'

‘Oh, sir, I didn't know you cared,' Beresford said, in a camp voice.

It was his first ever attempt at humour with his boss, and he was really quite proud of it.

Woodend gave him a hard stare, and then slowly a grin spread across his face. ‘Cheeky young bastard!' he said affectionately.

There were other pubs closer to the Corporation Park than the Drum and Monkey, but Scuddie had been banned from all of them, and so it was the Drum that he went to for the cigarettes.

He entered the pub through the door into the lounge bar, and walked up to the counter. He was aware that the other customers – mostly respectable middle-aged couples – were watching his progress with some anxiety, and he rather liked that.

The landlord appeared at the other side of the counter.

‘Wouldn't you be more at home in the public bar, son?' he asked, pointing with his thumb to the area behind him.

‘I don't want a drink,' Scuddie said. ‘I've only come for … come for …'

‘Come for what?'

‘Fags. Three packets of Embassy Tipped.'

‘No problem,' the landlord said, stepping away and allowing Scuddie an even clearer view of the two men sitting at a table in the corner of the public bar.

One of the men was Col, the Paki-basher. The other, a big bugger in a sports coat, looked very familiar, though Scuddie didn't quite know where from.

And then it came to him – he had seen the feller's picture in the paper.

‘So, do you want these cigarettes or not?' a voice asked.

‘Sorry,' Scuddie said, handing over the pound note and picking up the packets of cigarettes.

He turned and left the pub, his mind in a whirl, and it was not until he was halfway back to the Corporation Park that he realized he had forgotten to wait for Bazza's change.

Not that that really mattered, he told himself. Bazza would be far too interested in what he'd seen in the Drum to even ask for it.

I
t was ten o'clock on Thursday morning, and two tramps were standing at the edge of the busy outdoor market.

Pogo was idly and aimlessly watching the ordinary people going about their ordinary business, and remembering a time when he was ordinary too. And though Brian appeared to be doing exactly the same thing, Pogo knew he wasn't. Brian was looking for something – for
one
thing – on which to focus.

‘Time to move on,' Brian said.

‘So there's nothing here?'

‘Not a sausage.'

This was the pattern of their days now. Wandering around the town apparently without purpose, but searching – always searching.

‘You see, what I'm doing is keeping a lookout for something which will remind me of why I'm here,' Brian had explained in the first days of their friendship.

‘Like what?' Pogo had asked.

‘I couldn't tell you. But I'll know it when I see it.'

All sorts of things had
almost
seemed about to provide the aid to memory that Brian so desperately wanted.

One day, when they had been in the more expensive part of town, Brian had been transfixed by a big shiny Bentley Continental.

‘Maybe you used to drive one of these for a living,' Pogo had suggested. ‘Maybe you were some fat cat's chauffeur.'

‘Don't think so,' Brian said dismissively.

‘Or maybe you worked in a garage that serviced them.'

‘Not that either.'

So Pogo had fallen silent, and Brian had studied the car for another half-hour before shaking his head and saying, ‘That's not it. It's not quite the right shape.'

‘The right shape for what?' Pogo had asked as they walked away.

‘Don't know,' Brian had admitted.

On another occasion, he had expressed some interest in one of the pubs – the Engineers' Arms.

‘Does it seem familiar?' Pogo had asked.

‘Maybe.'

‘Did you use to drink in there?'

‘I don't think so.'

A street, a shop, a stretch of the canal – all these had brought a flicker of interest to Brian's eyes, but that flicker had soon faded away.

Perhaps they were looking in the wrong town altogether. Perhaps there was no such thing as the
right
town, because Brian only
thought
he was looking for something.

It didn't matter, Pogo told himself. None of it mattered.

Though guarding the sleeping Brian through the night meant he got little sleep himself, and following Brian around the town during the day was bringing him almost to the point of exhaustion, Pogo didn't begrudge any of it.

When he had first rediscovered a purpose in life, that purpose was to help Monika Paniatowski catch the killer. But it wasn't any more. Now, his purpose had been honed down to something much simpler, and – in a way – much purer. All he wanted to do was keep Brian alive.

Elizabeth Driver was sitting in the residents' bar of the Royal Victoria Hotel. The clock on the wall said it was twenty-five past two, which meant that Bob Rutter would arrive in the next five minutes, because he was never late – at least for her.

They'd had a wonderful time together in Oxford, she thought.

They'd visited the same student pubs that Oxford undergraduates had been visiting for hundreds of years – and for hundreds of years had been chased out of them by the bowler-hatted members of the special university police force known as Bulldogs, when they'd had too much to drink.

They'd walked hand-in-hand along the banks of the River Isis, making up names for the swans as they glided by.

‘Ermintrude,' Rutter had suggested, pointing at one of them.

‘Ermintrude!' she'd mocked. ‘It's not a
pig
! It's a regal bird. I shall call her Giselle.'

‘Whatever you say,' Rutter had agreed happily. ‘You're the boss.'

‘And you'd better not forget it,' Elizabeth had cautioned him.

One day, they'd even – God help them – taken a punt out on the river, and though it had been almost unbelievably cold, they'd had a hell of a good time.

And slowly it had begun to dawn on Driver that perhaps she'd been wrong about the nature of the future relationship she'd planned with Rutter. That perhaps he wouldn't be just like a pair of comfortable old shoes she made use of from time to time. That perhaps she wouldn't need to have other men on the side. That perhaps Bob Rutter was actually – and incredibly – everything she wanted.

It was true, she admitted, that things hadn't been quite the same since they'd returned to Whitebridge. In fact, Bob had been moody and almost secretive. But that was understandable. Though he hadn't told her himself, she knew he was about to break his links with his past – and that was never going to be easy.

She suddenly felt a gentle kiss on the back of her neck, and heard a voice say, ‘You shouldn't be wasting your time here, you idle woman. You should be working on the book.'

For a moment her heart faltered, and then she realized that it wasn't the book which would make her fortune he was talking about, but the wholly imaginary
Maria
book.

Rutter walked around her chair, and sat down opposite her.

‘Just as a matter of interest, how
is
the book going?' he asked.

He was trying to keep his tone light – almost disinterested – but there was an underlying seriousness to his words.

‘It still matters, doesn't it?' Elizabeth Driver asked.

‘Of course it still matters,' Rutter replied. ‘Why wouldn't it?'

‘Well, I just thought that given how much your circumstances have changed – how much
our
circumstances have changed – it wouldn't be quite so important to you any more.'

‘It's
because
circumstances have changed that it's important,' Rutter said. ‘I need to make my peace with the past. And that's why I really
would
like to know how it's going.'

‘It's going fine,' Driver lied. ‘Another couple of months and it will be finished.'

‘Can I see what you've done so far?' Rutter asked hopefully.

Elizabeth Driver shook her head. ‘I never let anyone look at my work in progress.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because if I knew that someone had seen it in its unpolished form, it would disrupt the creative process – and the book would never be the same again.'

‘Couldn't you let me see it, and then pretend to yourself that I hadn't?'

‘It doesn't work like that.'

Rutter looked disappointed, but then he said, ‘Well, we both want what's best for the book, don't we?'

‘Indeed we do,' Driver agreed.

It looked like she was actually going to have to
write
the bloody book, she told herself.

And maybe that would be no bad thing, if it made it easier for Bob to accept that she'd had to write the
other
book as well.

Even when he was still thirty yards from the chip shop, Beresford knew that something was wrong. The gang wasn't doing any of the sorts of things they usually did – watching the street for girls to ogle and Asians to abuse, playing cards for matchsticks, or kicking around a tin can and pretending they were star performers in Whitebridge Rovers FC.

That night they were all sitting on the wall, as stiff as boards, as silent as the dead.

They were waiting for something, Beresford thought – and that something could only be him.

‘
If you think there's any chance they're startin' to become suspicious of you, get the hell out of there as quick as you can
,' Woodend had told him the previous evening.

But what if he
did
get the hell out? That would leave Bazza free to do whatever he wanted to do.

Beresford forced himself to keep on walking, and when he reached the chip shop he said, ‘All right, lads?'

‘
We're
all right,' Big Bazza said ominously.

And the rest of the gang said nothing at all.

Beresford swallowed. ‘So what are we doin' tonight?' he asked. ‘Are we stayin' here, or goin' somewhere else?'

‘We thought we might go down to the town centre, an' cause a bit of trouble,' said Bazza, in a flat emotionless tone that chilled him to the bone.

‘What kind of trouble?'

‘If I tell you that now, it'll only spoil the surprise.'

‘
Get the hell out
,' Beresford heard Woodend's voice say in his head. ‘
Get the hell out
now
!
'

‘I've … er … just remembered, there's somethin' else I've got to do,' Beresford said. ‘So, if you don't mind, I don't think I'll come with you tonight.'

‘But I
do
mind,' Bazza said. ‘We
all
mind, don't we, lads?'

The others nodded, and despite the cold night air, Beresford realized he was starting to sweat.

‘Honestly, I'd come with you if I could,' he said, ‘but—'

‘But nothin'!' Bazza interrupted.

And the rest of the gang, who had been operating a flanking movement on Beresford, now moved in so that he was surrounded.

‘If that's what you want, Bazza, fair enough,' Beresford said. ‘After all, you are the leader of this gang.'

‘So I am,' Bazza agreed. ‘Well, you'd better get goin', hadn't you, lads?'

‘Aren't you comin' with us?' Beresford asked.

Bazza grinned unpleasantly. ‘No, I've … er … just remembered there's somethin' I've got to do,' he said, imitating Beresford. Then a sudden and totally unexpected look of hurt came into his eyes, and he added, ‘We could have been real mates, you an' me.'

The hard mods set off down the street in a tight bunch, with Beresford at the centre.

There was no escaping from them, the detective constable told himself. If he tried to break free, they would have him on the ground in a split second, and then the kicking would start.

The only hope he had was that they'd come across a police patrol, and he could find some way to signal to it that he was a fellow officer in trouble.

But he knew the chances of that happening were virtually non-existent, because most of the available manpower was being concentrated on the rundown areas where the tramps slept at night.

The gang reached the outdoor market. Earlier in the day it had been a busy, bustling place. Now, the tubular steel stalls were bare, and the whole area was quite, quite deserted.

‘This is far enough,' Scuddie decided, and the gang came to a halt.

‘Why are we stoppin' here?' Beresford wondered.

‘Because I say we are,' said Scuddie, who seemed, overnight, to have been promoted to the position of Big Bazza's second-in-command.

‘But there's nothin' goin' on,' Beresford protested.

‘No,' Scuddie agreed. ‘There isn't. Not yet!'

The hard mod took a watch out of his pocket, and studied it with all the care and attention of someone who is not used to telling the time.

How long had Scuddie even
had
a watch? Beresford wondered. He was almost certain he'd never
seen
him with one before.

‘Another ten minutes,' Scuddie announced.

‘Another ten minutes before
what
?' Beresford asked.

Scuddie grinned. ‘Like Bazza said, I can't tell you that without spoilin' the surprise.'

Earlier in the day – and acting on the Boss's orders – Bazza had visited the telephone kiosk near the old mill to make sure it was still working. Now, after first checking his watch, he entered the kiosk, picked up the receiver, and dialled 999.