Murder of a Dead Man (26 page)

‘Nothing, but he’ll be back tomorrow.’

‘Then you’d better have Adam Weaver ready and waiting for him in a cell, hadn’t you?’ the superintendent muttered darkly.

After dropping Anna off, Trevor considered what he should do next. Conscience told him he should return to the station to check if Dan had telephoned from the States or see if Peter had found anything in the skip, but he felt too restless to sit behind a desk.

He could go down Jubilee Street and talk to Tom Morris, Sam Mayberry or Captain Arkwright, but there was no reason to suppose that they’d have anything new to report. He could even take an hour out, as there was no one to shout at him, not that Dan ever really shouted.

He glanced at his watch; a quarter to twelve.

There were only two places Lyn was likely to be at this hour: the hospital or her parents’ home. He could offer to buy her an early lunch, take her somewhere cosy, find a quiet table, talk reconciliation – he considered it. Even if he managed to persuade her to move back in with him, nothing would change. Depending on what was waiting for him at the station, he’d be spending that evening either waiting for Dan’s return, or out combing the streets for Tony again, in the hope of preventing the lunatic from killing someone else.

Taking Lyn out to lunch wouldn’t solve anything. If anything, it would only create a whole new set of problems.

He gazed at the towering pillars of the new burns unit behind A and E. He could offer to buy Daisy lunch instead…

Daisy had become a drug he couldn’t get out of his system. But she’d only ask him about Lyn. She didn’t want to complicate things. So nothing in his life was resolved. Nothing at all, he reflected, as he reached for the ignition.

‘Dan phoned.’ Peter greeted Trevor when he walked into the office carrying a brown paper bag. ‘He confirmed Adam Weaver is wearing Anthony George’s face.’

‘Good.’ Trevor dumped his food on Anna’s desk. He sat behind it and opened the bag.

‘Little woman isn’t going to like you eating junk food,’ Peter taunted.

‘The little woman isn’t around to object,’

Trevor retorted unthinkingly.

‘You let her go?’ Peter unwrapped the fish and chips he’d sent out for.

‘It wasn’t a question of letting her go. She just went.’

‘What did you do to make her?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing to try and keep her either, by the look of you. You’re a bloody idiot, Trevor. Don’t you realise that girl was the best thing that ever happened to you?’

‘Best thing? To go home every night to nagging. For the first time in eight months my life is peaceful. I can walk into my own house without anyone asking me where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing, and how late I’m going to work tomorrow.’

‘She’s concerned about you.’

‘Can this be the same man who told me six months ago police officers should live alone?’

‘I was talking about myself.’

‘Great advice you give, Peter, especially when you consider you’re as good as living with Anna.’

‘I am not, and anyway that’s none of your business.’

‘Neither is Lyn yours.’ Trevor took out the carton of orange juice he’d bought and ripped off the plastic top.

‘It’s Daisy, isn’t it?’

‘Lyn was jealous of Daisy,’ Trevor admitted.

‘So, when is the doctor moving in with you?’

‘She’s not. She doesn’t want to get involved in a break-up between Lyn and myself.’

‘But you did ask her to move in?’

‘Lyn only moved out yesterday.’

‘But you think you’re in love with Daisy, not Lyn?’

Trevor tore open the paper bag and spread it out on the desk. He opened a polystyrene carton, took out a chicken burger and bit into it.

‘Well?’ Peter demanded.

‘I don’t know,’ Trevor answered irritably.

‘What about Lyn? Doesn’t she deserve something from you after all the months you’ve lived together?’

‘I’ve just told you my private life is none of your damned business.’

Peter shook his head. ‘The trouble with you, Trevor, is you don’t know when you’re well off.’

The light was beginning to fade when Tony woke.

Something had disturbed his sleep – what? Heart pounding, he lay still, tensing his body in readiness to flee – or fight. Grit burnt into his shoulders and the backs of his thighs through his jeans and shirt.

Children were playing close by – how close? He parted the blinds with his fingers and peered through the gap. Wherever the children were, they weren’t in this garden.

Clambering to his knees he slid back the greenhouse door. It grated with a rasping he was certain could be heard at the end of the street. Cold air rushed in dispersing the damp, musty smell of wet earth and potting compost. The wall between the garden he was in and next door was barely four foot high. He slithered out, crawling like a commando over a concrete path. He cried out involuntarily as something sharp and heavy landed on his back. A cat shot over his head and up a fence post.

He closed his eyes and lay flat, hoping no one had heard his cry. Minutes stole past. He opened his eyes and rolled over. Washing still flapped on the line above him. He eyed a pair of men’s jeans, a checked shirt and a pullover. They looked too wide for him, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Still kneeling, he reached up and tugged. The pegs that held the jeans snapped on the third pull. The shirt and pullover were easier.

He retreated back into the greenhouse and changed quickly, bundling his filthy clothes under his arm. He couldn’t leave them. If the theft from the line was reported the police might guess it was him. Possibly they would prime sniffer dogs, as his character in the series had done when investigating a burglary. He looked around to check that he hadn’t left anything and saw a pair of garden shears. He picked them up, opened the blades and ran his fingers along the edges. Pulling his long hair to the side of his head he hacked at it. He tucked the matted severed mane into his bundle of clothes and pushed the shoulder-length remains inside his collar.

As an afterthought he rolled the shears into his bundle.

He left the greenhouse, looked at the outside tap and decided against washing. The children’s voices were still drifting over the wall. The sooner he left this place behind him the better.

Trevor handed the pages of a report Dan had faxed from New York to Peter.

‘The inspector was thorough.’ Peter scanned the pages.

‘Did you expect him to be anything else?’

‘No.’ Peter handed the last page back to Trevor.

‘Our next stop is Brian Marks.’

While Trevor dialled an outside line, Peter ate his fish and chips and thought about Anna. All available personnel were scheduled to search the town again that night for Tony. The prospect of another wasted night on the streets made him angry.

Sometimes it seemed as though he had wasted his life peering into the seamier side of life. He was tempted to plead sickness, pick up Anna and take her somewhere special. Wine and dine her, and at the end of the evening ask her to move in with him.

It had been a long time since a woman had excited him the way she did, and although sex was a motivating factor, with Anna it was only a part of their relationship. They were friends as well as lovers. Something that had never happened to him with a woman before. He actually enjoyed talking to her.

On the down side he also knew she’d be hell to live with for someone with his habits. But he wasn’t too old to change. Not when the prize was someone like her, he reflected, remembering just how good the lunch-hour spent between the sheets had been.

‘Peter?’

Trevor replaced the telephone receiver. ‘He’s away until next week.’

‘Who?’ Peter asked.

‘Brian Marks. His secretary has pencilled us in for eight-thirty next Thursday morning. That’s the day she’s expecting him back, and the only time free in his diary.’

‘We need a warrant?’

‘I’ll check with Dan when he gets back tomorrow to see how he wants to play it.’

‘Did the secretary say where Marks was?’

‘She doesn’t know. All he told her is that he’s away on private and urgent business, and can’t be contacted.’

‘How convenient for him.’

‘But not for us,’ Trevor mused.

The taxi that had taken Anna from the outpatients’

clinic deposited her outside her front door at three in the afternoon. She paid the driver, stuck the key in her door and after some painful manipulation of her bandaged thumbs, succeeded in turning it in the lock. She dropped her coat, bag and keys on the floor and slammed the door behind her.

Staring at the mess in her living room, she decided Peter had been right. It was disgusting. Too lethargic to attempt to clear it, she climbed the stairs and went into the bathroom. Wincing, she turned on the tap with her bandaged hand, and managed, by dint of holding her toothbrush between her forefinger and thumb, to clean her teeth. Switching off the water she went into her bedroom. The only room in the house she’d actually finished decorating. The brass bed-head gleamed with the lacquer she’d applied so it wouldn’t need polishing.

The Tiffany lamp on the bedside table was dull bronze, the bedspread and matching curtains old gold lace. Making a mental note to invite Peter up, so he wouldn’t think she was a complete slob, she moved a pile of clothes from the bed on to a chair and switched on the television she’d hung on a bracket in the corner of the room.

Picking up the remote, she lay on the bed and flicked through the channels. Two were horse racing; one was a bad – very bad American soap.

Turning the sound down, she lay back on the pillows and watched the set wobble as a young man with an improbable hairstyle knocked on a plywood front door. She didn’t see much more. The combination of the painkillers they’d fed her in the hospital and exhaustion proved too much. The soap opera gave way to a news bulletin, which in its turn was supplanted by a cartoon. She continued to sleep through them all.

‘You wanted a list of breakins, sir,’ Chris dropped a list on Trevor’s desk.

Trevor pushed aside his uneaten chips. He stared at the sheet. ‘Seventy-two?’

‘Slightly above average for a Friday night in town, sir.’

Trevor looked across at Peter who, lump of fish in hand, was studying his own copy.

‘Fingerprint squad been out on all of these?’

Peter mumbled through a full mouth.

‘They’re trying to get around them, sir.’

‘We can discount some.’ Peter picked up a pencil, and crossed off the first half a dozen. ‘Our man wouldn’t be interested in antiques, furniture, paintings, or silverware.’

‘What about the videos and televisions?’ Chris suggested. ‘He’s been living on the streets for a couple of years. He could have made connections.’

‘No fence I know is going to risk taking goods off a murder suspect with the publicity we’ve got out on him, I doubt there’s anyone in town who doesn’t know who he is. What we’re looking for is a breakin with food, money, and possibly clothes, taken,’ Peter said.

‘And that restricts it to…’

‘Just five,’ Peter interrupted Chris.

‘Six,’ Trevor corrected. ‘Nasturtium Drive.’

‘He’d stick out like a sore thumb up there.’

‘I would have said he’d stick out like a sore thumb anywhere, but he seems to be evading us very nicely at the moment,’ Trevor wrapped the remains of his meal in the brown paper and dumped it in the bin.

‘Nasturtium Drive – freezer emptied, approx-imately two hundred pounds worth of food,’ Peter read. ‘I can’t see our man staggering around with a sack of frozen food.’

‘He could have carried it to a new squat. Three bottles of whisky have gone…’

‘But no clothes, no blankets. We know he left everything behind in that factory.’

‘OK drop it, let’s move on.’

Uncertain whether he was expected to stay or not, Chris Brooke waited while the sergeants worked their way down the list.

‘This is more like it, pork pies and cans of beer,’ Peter commented.

‘From a student hall?’

‘He’d fit in.’

‘None of the students I’ve seen are as filthy as our Tony.’ Trevor stabbed the paper with his pencil.

‘Balaclava Street.’

‘Sink damaged, blanket taken, a glass found near the sink – you ordered the glass to be printed?’

Peter demanded of Chris.

‘I don’t think they’ve got to it yet, sir.’

‘See that they do, right away.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Even if he was in Balaclava Street last night, he could be anywhere by now, and we haven’t a clue where to start looking,’ Trevor said after Chris left.

Peter lifted his anorak from a peg on the back of the door. ‘Let’s take a run down Jubilee Street and talk to Sam and Tom Morris.’

‘Why? They won’t have any news, and both of them are sick of the sight of us.’

‘Tactics, Trevor. After a couple of hours with them we’ll deserve a meal break before kicking off the search in the streets,’ he said, still planning a romantic dinner with Anna. ‘And tonight we’ll tour in a car. I bloody froze last night.’

‘And so life goes on,’ Trevor left his chair.

‘As we need to be alert for Dan’s return tomorrow, I suggest a twelve o’clock curfew, but only for the sergeants.’

‘And if Bill finds out?’

‘He can scream all he likes. I need my beauty sleep.’

‘I have to make a call before we go. I’ll use Dan’s office.’

Trevor closed the door behind him, sat in the inspector’s chair, pulled his diary from his pocket, checked a number and dialled. It rang six times and he hesitated at each ring. It would be easy to drop the receiver before it was answered. Much easier than searching for words to convey his confused emotions.

‘Hi.’

Trevor recognised Lyn’s brother’s voice. He wondered why he wasn’t in his office, then he remembered it was Saturday. The weekend was just one more thing he tended to forget about when he was immersed in a case.

‘Simon, it’s Trevor Joseph.’

‘I was wondering when you were going to ring.’

Was it animosity that made his voice brusque, or was he in a hurry?