KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) (3 page)

3

Monday: M60 motorway, clockwise section 11 a.m.

I was still thinking about the business when I reached the orbital motorway. I didn’t need an economics guru to tell me that the country was in recession. Traffic was noticeably thinner.

Thoughts of Lew Greene’s mysterious villain made me study my rear view mirror with care. If there was a tail I couldn’t spot it.

Just to be on the safe side I zoomed off the motorway at Worsley and circled the roundabout twice.

Back on the M60 I changed lanes several times. There was definitely no one following me and in any case when I turned off onto the M61 there was nothing to distinguish my Mondeo from the dozens of others driven by salesmen and mid level executives. I approached Bolton on the A666, the road to Hell as my father often jokes, then passed through the old mill town and reached the West Pennine Moors in record time.

My parents’ home in a handloom weaver’s croft has been entirely rebuilt after the fire that almost destroyed it some years ago. The destruction was a blessing in disguise for Paddy. It’s given him the opportunity to deploy his construction skills on a large scale. The only fly in the ointment is that the rundown farm between his house and the main road is as dilapidated as ever. Dogs, cattle, and broken machinery lie about in a scene of chaos. It provides Paddy with something to grumble at.

The cottage is perfectly positioned to catch the maximum daylight although a large oak tree at one side casts shadows that would have been unwelcome to the weavers: built of the local limestone the building merges into the landscape. Where the old weavers once pegged out cloth to bleach in the sun there’s a large garden.

I spotted my mother. She was wearing a battered old Barbour and a shapeless rain hat. She looked like a Russian
peasant woman in the bad old days.

The rain was keeping up; drizzle punctuated by heavy downpours, but even so Eileen was swinging a mattock at the unresponsive soil.

I parked the car and hurried towards her. I snatched the tool out of her hand.

‘What is it with you two?’ I asked angrily. ‘Slavery was abolished a long time ago. You’re both rolling in money yet you can’t let go. You’re bashing the soil and he’s upstairs robbing a tradesman of a day’s work.’

‘Oh, don’t be so silly Dave,’ Eileen said, giving me a peck on the cheek with frozen lips. ‘Just think, if we both drop dead from exhaustion, all this will be yours.’

‘Don’t talk like that!’ I said sharply.

‘It’s better for us to be working like this than toiling on a treadmill in a private gym like you and Jan,’ she replied with a smile. ‘It keeps us fit and it’s productive. I’m putting potatoes in here.’

‘The Irish famine was a long time ago,’ I muttered but I knew argument was useless.

‘Oh, come in and shut up,’ she said, ‘or at least stop complaining. I don’t ask you to give up your many dangerous activities.’

‘What?’ I exploded. ‘You never do anything but that, not that I have any dangerous activities nowadays.’

‘How’s dear Jan,’ she asked, changing the subject. ‘That dear sweet girl is trying so hard to be a good wife to you. I wonder if you value her enough.’

This was tough to take from a woman who barely twelve calendar months previously had moved heaven and earth to marry me off to Kate McKenzie, daughter of an old friend of hers. Kate’s a good woman. She saved my life. She just isn’t the right woman for me.

‘Jan’s in good health,’ I said curtly. With my parents I’ve learned to take the rough with the smooth.

‘And the baby?’

‘She went for a scan yesterday. Baby’s developing normally.’

‘Are you both still resisting the temptation to know whether it’s a boy or a girl?’

‘Yes,’ I said abruptly.

I didn’t want to be sidetracked.

‘Well, I can see you’re in one of your moods,’ she said, leading me to the door where we were met by Paddy in white decorator’s overalls.

‘To what do we owe this honour?’ he asked, bowing to me.

‘Oh, be careful what you say, he’ll bite your head off,’ Eileen warned.

‘I haven’t bitten anyone’s head off. I think it’s daft for you to be slaving away with a mattock in the teeming rain when the supermarket shelves are groaning with potatoes.’

‘They don’t taste as good as my own produce,’ she shot back. ‘I grew some white beetroot that’s just delicious with melted cheese.’

‘Right, that’s it! I’m going,’ I said, turning on my heel.

‘Hold on, hothead!’ Paddy said, gripping my arm. ‘You must have the wind up about something or you wouldn’t have come up here on a Monday morning. It’s not that Hobby Dancer, is it?’

‘No, nothing like that, not a call from a serial killer at least. The Right Honourable Sir Lewis Greene has just paid me a visit.’

‘My word, what an honour for you,’ Paddy said snidely. ‘You’d better get your feet under the table and have a cup of tea while you tell us what he’s done to ruffle your feathers.’

Eileen busied herself getting out of her peasant gear while Paddy brewed the tea. Then we all sat down at the kitchen table.

‘So what was Lew on about?’ Paddy asked as he poured out the tea.

I told them about Lew’s strange request, confident that it would go no further. I omitted the details of Lew’s attempted blackmail but did tell them that he’d referred to my violent past.

Whatever else they are both my parents know how to keep a secret. I sometimes think that I was driven to become an investigator because of the secrecy with which even the most trivial events were shrouded throughout my childhood.

‘And he gave you the name?’ Paddy asked.

‘I told you. It’s in a notebook in my safe. I haven’t seen it and I don’t want to.’

They both stared at me for a while, shifting uncomfortably on their chairs. They didn’t seem to have had prior knowledge of Lew’s request. If they had they gave no sign. I’ve never been able to read their faces.

‘Do you think it’s a practical joke?’ Eileen asked eventually.

‘No, there never was much joviality in the Greene family,’ Paddy retorted. ‘Why, when Lew’s mum came into that inheritance you’d have thought they’d have had a holiday or a bit of a celebration, but not old Ma Greene, and Lew’s just like her. She went straight round to the parish priest and got him to phone that posh school in Yorkshire. Lew and his brother were on their way within the week. Unnatural to send your kids away like, I call it.’

‘Go on, Paddy, you old hypocrite. I had to argue you out of sending Dave to the same place,’ Eileen rejoined.

She underlined her remark with a nudge that nearly knocked his cup out of his hand.

‘What? I’ve never heard this before.’

‘It was just a passing idea,’ Paddy muttered awkwardly. I’ll swear that he almost blushed. One of his secrets was about to be exposed.

‘You sent off for the prospectus and took us for a look round.’

Dim memories of a sightseeing trip to North Yorkshire that included a visit to gloomy school dormitories came flooding back.

‘We could have afforded the fees,’ he snorted, ‘and Dave might have turned out a damn sight better than he has if we’d sent him. He might have been a diplomat or a top civil servant by now.’

‘A diplomat,’ I sneered. ‘Gosh, do you think I might have even got into Parliament? Forget about that. I have a successful detective business,’ I said.

‘Successful if you don’t count the number of times you’ve been banged up.’

‘I’ve never been convicted of anything,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘But if I do what your dear pal Lew Greene wants I’ll end up doing life!’

‘Yeah, I don’t know what Lew’s thinking of,’ Paddy admitted.

‘Poor man, he must be at the end of his tether,’ Eileen agreed.

‘Poor me, don’t you mean?’

‘Be fair, Dave, he is your godfather and he’s an important man,’ Paddy said.

‘I hope you’re not suggesting that I do his bidding. I came here in the hope that you could use your influence and get him to see sense.’

‘And do what?’

‘Why, go to the police or the government, of course. If this mystery man’s so dangerous they could do something.’

To my surprise Paddy disagreed.

‘I don’t know about that. Coppers aren’t like they were in my day,’ he said gloomily. ‘Keeping secrets is the last thing some of these young uns care about. If you ask me, it’s all this form filling and sending emails. Carpal tunnel syndrome’s the major cause of injury on the Force these days. They’re lost if they’ve no one to report to every five minutes. I was only saying to Archie Sinclair the other day, no sooner do they open a sensitive inquiry than you’re reading about it in the papers.’ The reference to Archie Sinclair made me pull a face. Sinclair was Dad’s old boss. A lean faced Scot who’d risen to the giddy height of Assistant Chief Constable. He’d taken the lead in quizzing me about the disappearance of Dee Elsworth’s would be rapists.

‘OK, so the police are no use, and I can agree with him there …’

‘David!’ they scolded in unison.

‘Just saying … so they’re no use
these days
but he could have gone to the government. They’d have had to listen to him. They gave him the job.’

‘And if he didn’t, what does that tell you?’

‘That he’s as crazy as a box of broken cream crackers!’

‘No, it tells you he couldn’t trust anyone except his own family and whether you like it or not that means you.’

‘So you think I should go ahead, find him a hit man and let him get on with it?’

‘Down to you, son,’ he muttered.

‘Dave,’ Eileen said anxiously, ‘you don’t know what’s troubling Lew.’

‘And I don’t want to know.’

‘He’s known you all your life. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.’

‘Then he’s got a fine way of going about it. He even left an incriminating document in my safe.’

‘Dave, I know you’ve got the baby coming and everything but you’ve helped so many people before, some of them a lot less deserving than your Uncle Lew. I just think you should listen to what he has to say.’

‘Thanks a bunch, Mum,’ I said bitterly
.

4

Monday: South bound to Cheshire 12.20 p.m.

Seething, I drove back down Blackburn Road through the run-down terraced streets of Bolton. Mosques, halal butchers, curry parlours and fruit and veg shops selling nothing had replaced the chippies and chapels of old.

I’d been a total fool.

I’d gone to the Pennine Moors expecting that Paddy would tell Lew Greene to book himself a long stay in a celebrity burn-out centre. Instead I’d met a fine display of fence sitting from both of them.

I cursed my weakness.

It was my own fault for running to those two eccentrics like a frightened child. I should have told Sir Lew to bugger off to his face. I ought to go and get that notebook and shove it in his letterbox unread.

He had tried to blackmail me. Why else would he mention the unmarked grave in Dee Elsworth’s garden? It was blackmail pure and simple. Was there any tangible proof after all this time? Heck, I’d buried the pair in damp soil with enough quick lime to whitewash half the cottages in Cheshire. There might be no trace of them now.

Might be.

I just didn’t know and that lack of certainty paralysed me. Suppose the plods heard the same whispers Lew had tuned into? It wouldn’t be long before there were diggers in Dee’s garden.

Even so the grave was deep. They might never find it.

But knowing I was the suspect would be enough to keep them going. They’d never give up until they’d excavated every ounce of soil in that garden.

Hearing Paddy’s moans over the years about criminals who’d ‘got off’ had been a good introduction to the mentality of many of the boys in blue. Guilty as hell, that’s what a lot of them thought I was, and damn the evidence of my innocence. I’d always be the Manchester Mangler who’d got off on a technicality. Some would jump at the chance to confirm their prejudices.

What was so gut-wrenching about Lew Greene knowing about events at Dee Elsworth’s mansion was that it meant that the unwritten agreement I’d had with Dee had been broken. In return for Dee’s silence about the killings and they were killings … I had to face that … I’d shot two men dead and then buried them … she’d kept her mouth shut about the fact that I was the father of her twin sons.

We’d buried the two murderous thugs in an extremely deep grave, more like ten feet than six. I was super fit in those days. The work was nerve-wracking and exhausting with a continual fear of discovery. When we’d finished we ended up in Dee’s shower room and, then, nature took its course.

My nature, that is.

I was always up for it in those days.

As I still am I suppose, but responsibilities have curbed my lecherous instincts.

I suppose.

Dee only informed me of the consequences of our unplanned tryst when her pregnancy was well established. At the same time she told me she’d no intention of leaving her husband. I’d agreed never to see the twins I fathered. The unspoken bargain was that
all
the happenings of the fatal day were to be consigned to oblivion. My sole memento was an L.S.Lowry painting which Dee gave me and which I still own.

For years after there was a force pulling me to her home. ‘Blood calls to blood,’ as my old granny would have said if she’d thought of it. How many times had I driven towards the Elsworth mansion hoping for a peek at those boys only to turn away at the last moment? Now Dee must have revealed our secret. Why, oh why? Is it payback time? I wondered how Harold Elsworth would like his sons to undergo a paternity test.

It would break that proud snob’s heart, not to mention wrecking two families.

Mentally cringing for having thought it, I rejected the idea. There are never going to be paternity tests. Involvement in messy
divorces is definitely not on my agenda.

I was so stressed out and angry that I decided not to return to Manchester but to go and cool off at home. I turned my mobile off.

The motorway exit for central Manchester came up on my left and I drove past. I continued towards Stockport before turning off to join the A34, the highway that leads to the ‘Golden Triangle’ domain of millionaire footballers and of thousands of the less well off like me.

Thought of home helped to lighten my mood a little. That’s the trouble with me; I never stay po-faced for long.

I no longer live in a flat in the fine diverse district of Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Don’t get me wrong, diversity’s great but you can have too much of a good thing. All the little amenities that had made me comfortable in Chorlton had gradually disappeared; the cheese shop, the barbers, the shoe shop. They all went one after another as if someone was pecking away at my life style. The second hand bookshop had become an Italian deli. Certainly a high end deli was much needed by the high salaried singles flocking to the area but there were already two others and three specialist coffee shops on one short street. Jan and I moved into East Cheshire to an isolated farmhouse on the hills overlooking the Plain.

We sold our separate properties and I got a pot of gold from my libel damages.

When we found our farmhouse it was derelict, partly roofless and waist deep in cow dung but even so it didn’t come cheaply. I wasn’t the only one with money in the recession. Developers were having fist fights with estate agents to get their hands on ramshackle heaps of stone which could be turned into mini stately homes for Premier League footballers and TV stars.

Luckily, I learned about Topfield Farm from a client who owed me a favour. He was a pal of the eighty
-year-old ‘gentleman farmer’ who wanted to retire and dispose of his properties.

Topfield was never put on the market. One of several small farms which had been amalgamated into a larger unit, the G-F, as we called him, intended it for his son and heir but the son had moved to Australia forty years ago and the building was
abandoned to the elements and the cattle.

It fell into ruin apart from the attached barn, which remained in use. Jan and I agreed to an independent valuation and were able to pay cash. The G-F succumbed to Jan’s smile and the children’s’ charm and threw in ten acres of ground adjoining and we moved into the barn and a caravan for six months while the ruin was gutted and renovated to our specifications.

At the time our plans didn’t include a nursery but with two spare bedrooms that’s not a problem. Eileen’s sniping about our private gym is true enough. We have one. The long stone building is L shaped and a drawing room, gym/workshop and garage form the base of the L with our master bedroom above. The long arm of the L includes a small study for the kids to do their homework in, a sitting/family room, oak staircase to the first floor, dining room and finally a massive kitchen that takes up the whole width of the building. With its York stone flagged floor and four-oven AGA the kitchen’s the heart of the house. Honestly, I’d never aspired to become an Aga owning property developer but the idea of an Aga appealed to Jan. She made a joke about it but I didn’t quarrel with her whim. I’d every reason to please her after she got back together with me. There’s a utility room tagged on the end of the building. The property’s now worth at least twice or even three times what we shelled out but we’ve turned down several offers.

Topfield Farm is our place. We’re there for keeps.

Set about two hundred yards back from a winding country lane on a small knoll, it has superb views, quite an unusual thing in Cheshire where many properties are screened by dense vegetation, for privacy you know. The barn sits opposite the base of the L with a stone wall creating an enclosed cobbled farmyard where livestock was once mustered.

The only stock today is myself, Jan and her children Jenny and Lloyd, and the dog, Mangler. I was persuaded to buy ‘Mangler’ when we decided that pregnant Jan wasn’t up to looking after the pony Jenny had set her heart on. There’s a scheme to turn the barn into a pad for Jan’s mum, but that’s in the air and depends on the good graces of the Cheshire East planning department.

Every morning when I set out for work I can see faraway Manchester in the distance. Well, I can see it when the plain isn’t smothered in low clouds and rain, which it is about two days out of three. On good days I can see the Beetham Tower and the airport.

Jan believes that the distance we’ve put between ourselves and the Manchester crime scene has had a soothing effect on my temperament. Certainly we seem to be getting along a lot better. Oil and water, that’s Jan and me, attraction of opposites. The first move came in Manchester when she agreed to move back in with me. The children were pining she said. Then she agreed to marriage and the flight to the hills. It was to make things easier with our families she claimed, and now a baby was on the way.

There are lots of reasons why I should forget that Lew Greene is my godfather.

I turned off the A34, took the Handforth Bypass and then the winding lane into the hills, passing signposts with names like Pott Shrigley, Tegg’s Nose, Rainow and Wincle. I love driving on those lanes, watching the hedges and overarching trees turn glowing green as the dull colours of winter fade away. Just motoring along them is like a holiday after the streets of Manchester. On one occasion a reddish brown creature, like a salami sausage with tiny legs at each end, ran across my path.

I later discovered that it was a weasel.

The news that such animals actually exist outside the pages of bedtime stories was a revelation. The weasels I’d been dealing with all moved on two legs. I bought nature books and took the kids on walks looking for more.

Today no unusual wildlife crossed my trail.

Finally I drove up the narrow track that leads to Topfield Farm. The sight of the stone buildings usually calms my nerves. The grey limestone sends a message of permanence but now as I got out of the car to open the gate anxieties mounted.

I have no secrets from Jan but in her present state I didn’t want to tell her that Lew, someone she was only vaguely aware of, was raking up my past and trying to pressure me into becoming an assassin. The answer to Lew would be ‘no’ so there was no need to trouble her with his story. But she is the one person I find it hardest to hide my feelings from.

I parked the Mondeo and swung the heavy five
-barred gate back into place with the usual clatter. Jan appeared at the porch door. She was wearing a long short-sleeve print top over black leggings that did nothing to conceal her bump. My heart missed a beat.

‘What’s happened? Is something the matter?’ she asked.

‘I’m the boss. I can come home to see my beautiful wife whenever I like.’

‘Your beautiful wife is used to seeing you after six and she doesn’t like seeing you with that expression on your face. Something’s up.’

‘Nothing’s up.’

‘Oh yes, it is. I can tell,’ she insisted when I kissed her.

‘Where are Jenny and Lloyd?’

‘Don’t change the subject. You know they’re still at school.’

‘It’s just that Lloyd’s left his bike at the end of the lane again. Someone will half inch it.’

‘Aren’t you always telling us that we’re in leafy Cheshire now, not Manchester? The children round here are much more relaxed about their possessions.’

‘Relaxed or not, someone will steal that bike. It cost good money.’

I tried to squeeze past her and go into the family room but she held onto me.

‘Penny pincher Dave! I’m not letting you inside until you tell me what’s upset you.’

‘Nothing’s upset me except our son’s habits.’

Jenny and Lloyd are Jan’s children by her first husband but I’ve legally adopted them and they’ve changed their names to Cunane. That was another reason for our migration to the hills. We all needed a fresh start.

‘Tell me or I’m not letting you in,’ she insisted.

Jan has mellowed in a lot of ways, as have I, but there’s still plenty of steel in her spine. She held onto me.

As I’d already blurted everything out to Paddy and Eileen there was no point in trying to deceive Jan.

I told her about Sir Lew’s request, the notebook and my parents’ response.

‘Well, he’s obviously insane,’ she said bluntly. ‘Shouldn’t
we phone the Lord Chancellor’s office or something and tell them that their poor old judge has flipped his wig?’

‘It’s the Ministry of Justice these days and weren’t you listening when I told you what he said about my alleged past misdemeanours?’

‘That’s a bluff. They’d find nothing, assuming that they did dig up half the gardens in Tarn. He didn’t have the name did he? There must be a hundred bankers living near the lake at Tarn.’

‘He did have the name but it’s not only that. There are plenty of people in the Greater Manchester Police Service who’d love to have a crack at me again especially if a judge raised suspicions.’

‘I should think they have enough to do with all this terrorism they’re always on about without bothering you.’

‘Some of them have long memories.’

‘Dave, stop being paranoid! You’ve got good friends in the police. Why, Brendan Cullen practically owes his career to you and he’s a detective chief inspector now!’

‘I’m not paranoid. There are people out to get me and Brendan’s only one man.’

Jack Rix, the copper who’d tried to nail me for the Mangler murders may have been disgraced but he still has his supporters.