Unlucky For Some (6 page)

“Keith Scopes? DI Finch, Malworth CID. This is DCI Hill. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Scopes nodded, his eyes wary. “I remember you, Mr. Finch. Jerry just said police. I was expecting a couple of uniforms—someone said it was a mugging.”

“It might have started that way, but it ended in murder,” said Tom.

Scopes’s eyes widened slightly. “Murder?” he repeated. “Well—yeah, that would explain the ranks.”

“You left the club at half past eight or so—why?”

“I came out for a smoke.”

“Were you anywhere near Innes Passage?”

“Where?”

“The alley that runs down the side of this building.”

“Is that what it’s called? I didn’t know.”

“So now you do. Were you anywhere near there?”

“I was in there. It was snowing then, too. I went in to get some shelter.”

“And did you see anyone else?”

“Yeah—a couple of people. Jack Shaw—he’s the bloke that looks after the fruit machines for Waterman.”

Did everyone in this drama have some connection with Michael Waterman? Of course, Tom thought, the only two establishments open in this part of Malworth on a Sunday evening belonged to him, so it probably wasn’t so strange that the passersby were either his customers or his employees. No one else but residents would have any reason to be here, and the residents would be staying in on a night like this.

“Jack was acting a bit weird, now I come to think of it.”

“Oh?”

“Stopped in the shadows for some reason. But I noticed he seemed to be limping—maybe he was having trouble with his leg or something.”

“His leg?”

“He’s got an artificial leg, but you’d never know. He can do anything anyone with two good legs can do.” He grinned. “He even does Morris dancing.”

“How?” said Tom.

“Badly.” Keith laughed at his own joke. “They worked out routines that he could do. I think the whole thing might have been his idea. We never used to have Morris dancers.”

“We?” said Judy.

“Stoke Weston,” said Keith. “Jack lives there, too.”

“You said you saw a couple of people,” said Tom.

“Yeah—I saw a woman with Stephen Halliday. He’s a steward at the bingo club. He’s from Stoke Weston, too, as it happens. They were a little way behind Jack.”

Everyone was from Stoke Weston. This was turning into a very weird case, thought Tom. “Could you describe the woman?”

Scopes drew in a breath, blew out his cheeks. “She was just an ordinary woman. Middle-aged. I think she had gray hair. She was wearing a light-colored coat.”

That was Mrs. Fenton. She had indeed gone straight home, and she had been with someone. Things were looking up.

“And what does Stephen Halliday look like?”

“He’s about my height—five-eight or so, fair hair. He was wearing a leather jacket, and I think he was carrying a motorcycle helmet. They stopped at the door to the flats.”

Things had stopped looking up. That was the boy Wheelan had seen, and he was long gone by the time the murder took place. But maybe there were two youths with fair hair. “Did they go into the flats?”

“Dunno. I finished my cigarette, and left to come back here.”

“Was this man Jack Shaw still in the alley when you left?” Judy asked.

“No. He stood there for a bit, and then just walked on again.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No—I don’t think he saw me.”

Or to put it another way, thought Tom, you think he might have seen you, which is why you’re so ready to admit that you were hanging about in the alleyway shortly before the murder. “Why not?” he asked. “Were you standing in the shadows, too?”

“Let’s just say I didn’t draw attention to myself,” Scopes said. “He’s a bit of an anorak—bores the pants off you if you let him. I told you—he’s a Morris dancer.”

“So you don’t know where he’d been or where he was going?”

“I don’t know where he’d been, but he came here and had a word with Jerry, so he might be able to tell you.”

“Is there somewhere I can talk to Jerry where there isn’t music blaring?” asked Judy.

“Yeah—hang on.”

Keith picked up his mobile, and deftly sent a text message. “There you are,” he said to Judy. “I’ve told him to meet you in the office.”

“Thank you,” said Judy, and went inside.

Tom looked at Scopes for a moment before speaking. “You said you left the alley to come back here,” he said. “But you didn’t come back here, did you? You were gone for an hour and a half.”

Scopes looked a little irritated by Wheelan’s indiscretion. “I got a call on my mobile, and I had to deal with something. I didn’t get back until about ten to ten.”

“Can you tell me where you were?”

“Why should I?”

“Because it might rule you out of our investigation into this incident.”

“It was private. Nothing to do with the police.”

“A woman has been murdered. It looks as though she was the victim of a mugging—and that’s something you know a bit about, isn’t it?”

“Oh, for God’s sake! I haven’t done anything like that for five years. And I didn’t mean to hurt that woman I got done for. I just shoved her.”

“Maybe you didn’t mean to kill this one.”

“Am I a suspect?”

“Well, what do you think? You’re a mugger, and she was mugged. So where were you at nine o’clock this evening?”

Several emotions chased themselves across Scopes’s face as he went into an agony of indecision. He looked angry, scared and bewildered all at once, and had an argument with himself before he spoke. “At nine o’clock, I was in Barton,” he said. “I was doing a job for someone.”

“Who? Where?”

Scopes shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”

“In that case, you’ll stay a suspect.”

“Fine. When you’ve got enough evidence to arrest me, I’ll worry.”

“Right,” said Judy, emerging from the club. “If you’ve finished with Mr. Scopes, I think we can be off.”

The snow still fell, less heavy now, but just as persistent, as they walked back toward the alley, quiet and still now that everyone had gone.

“How did you know this was called Innes Passage?” Judy asked.

Tom grinned. “Hitch told me. I thought you’d be impressed.”

She rubbed cold hands together as she walked. “Wheelan thought I ought to know that Scopes borrowed a fiver from him earlier in the evening, so he was obviously in need of cash.”

“He says he was in Barton at nine o’clock.” Tom told Judy what Scopes had said.

“Did you believe him?”

“Yes, I think I did. I think he was frightened to tell me who he was doing this job for. Frightened of something, anyway.”

“And Wheelan said that Jack Shaw went to warn him that Waterman was at the bingo club—Waterman doesn’t normally work on Sundays, so I gather that everything’s a little more relaxed than it is during the week, when he’s likely to pop in. He says Shaw arrived at about twenty-five to nine and left again just before Keith came back.”

“I’ll have a word with him tomorrow,” said Tom. “He might have seen something Jerry didn’t see. And I want to know if he saw Halliday coming back, and if so, when.”

“We’ll need to talk to Stephen Halliday anyway,” said Judy. “He might know if Mrs. Fenton went into her flat or not. Did she go in and come out again, do you think?”

“If she did, it wasn’t to walk the dog,” said Tom. “Because it was in the flat, not running round loose in the street.”

“If something else brought her out again, we have to know what. Did someone telephone her? Call on her? Had she left something at the bingo club?
Did
Stephen Halliday come back?”

“The phone was checked. The last call to her number was made yesterday evening, so I don’t think she got a phone call that brought her out again. Halliday might have come back, I suppose, but it seems a bit unlikely.”

“It does indeed.”

As they walked back out into the thin, fine snow that still fell on Murchison Place, Judy turned to go to her car. “Right,” she said. “I will be talking to Tony Baker—as requested—first thing in the morning. Which means,” she added, smiling sweetly at him, “that you have a date with Freddie. Goodnight, Tom.”

If Tom had a quid for every time she’d put one over on him, he’d be a rich man. “Goodnight, guv.”

“Oh—and tell Liz I’ve got another load of clothes for her. I should have brought them with me—I didn’t think.”

“Will do.”

Tom and Liz had, with the birth of Charlotte, got close to Judy and Lloyd. Judy felt less than expert in the matter of bringing up a baby, and Liz had already done it twice, so her advice was frequently sought. Charlotte’s arrival had in its turn made Tom and Liz think wistfully of when their two were babies, and that had resulted in twins, born just under a year after Charlotte, a boy and a girl. And that had been a clever stroke, Tom thought, because Becky got all the clothes Charlotte had grown out of, which was a pretty fair saving, all things considered.

So she didn’t
always
come out on top, he thought, with a smile.

What had bothered Gary on the other observations was that it entailed letting all the deals go down, but at least he had understood the necessity, because their presence had had to be covert until they knew they had all the information necessary for the raids to succeed. But they would be breaking cover tonight anyway.

Tonight’s operation was the culmination of a drug offensive that had taken eighteen months of painstaking work, he knew that. The Chief Constable had announced it in his mission statement two years ago. Attacking the drug menace on all fronts, he’d called it. And it was being handled entirely by Bartonshire drug squad, because big though the operation was by their standards, it was still small-scale by national standards. It had cost a fortune, and the reputation of the force depended on its success. But what was the point, if all that stuff was on the streets already? Three people had called at the candy store so far, and they would be supplying any number of minor dealers.

“Why don’t we just raid them tonight?” he asked. “Why wait till morning? Three dealers have been and gone, and they’ll have sold the stuff to three dozen street-dealers by this time tomorrow.”

“Oh, no, they won’t,” said Kelly. “We’ve been keeping tabs on them all evening, and we’ll continue to do so.” He smiled. “This way we’re getting the wholesalers, the dealers, and the small fry that hang about the pubs and clubs and school playgrounds. I admit I didn’t recognize the one that came at nine o’clock, but we’ve got him on video, and we’ll get him eventually. But if we’d arrested him as he left, we’d have blown the whole operation.”

Gary realized for the first time just what a huge operation it was, and he might be a very small cog in a very big wheel, but from having felt bored and uninvolved, he suddenly felt elated that he was part of it.

Midnight. Ben’s train would be pulling out of Sheffield just about now, and his next stop would be Leuchars. He was off back to St. Andrews, and the life that Michael knew next to nothing about.

Michael had left the bingo club at ten, and had come home to his big, empty house. He had asked Jack Shaw in for a beer, but he had said he was going to pop in to the Tulliver before it closed. He had suggested that Michael come with him, but Michael had felt that he would be surplus to requirements, since Jack’s sole reason for going there was that he was in love with Grace Halliday. Not that he had ever thought of mentioning this to her, of course. He just worshipped from afar. But he still wouldn’t want Michael there, not really.

He wished Ben had been home a bit more often, so that they could have had a proper conversation. They needed to talk about Ben’s inheritance, for one thing. And Michael wanted to know how Ben was getting on at university. Was he still enjoying it? Did he know what sort of job he wanted to do when he left? How were his studies going? Did he think he’d come out of it with a good degree?

He wondered what it would have been like to go to university. It was hard for him to imagine adult learning—his tuition had ceased at sixteen, and education to him had been a succession of people telling you what to do and when to do it, and making a hell of a fuss if you didn’t.

He had skipped school as often as he’d gone; some money-making scheme or another had always required his attention more urgently than his lessons. He knew that he could have made something of himself at school, could have passed exams and gone on to university like Ben had, but the prospect had been too dim and distant to mean anything to him.

In the here and now, he had thought, with the lack of foresight of a teenage tearaway, there was money to be made. But he had always overreached himself, and lost it again. The steadying influence of Josephine had harnessed his potential; once he’d met her, he hadn’t looked back. Making money was second nature to him, and Josephine’s caution had stopped him sinking it all into some crazy scheme that would fail. She had made him take it step-by-step, and it had worked.

If he hadn’t met Josephine he’d have ended up in jail, there was no doubt about that at all. But she had financed him, and she wouldn’t countenance anything even faintly illegal being done with her money, so he’d had to play it straight, and it had paid off. People knew they could trust him with their money. Of course, there had always been things that had to be done, but he had had the sense to pay other people to do them, and pay them well enough to keep him out of it if they were caught. Because in his world it wasn’t enough to be liked, or respected. A bit of fear always came in handy. And those who crossed Michael knew that they would be in trouble, so no one did it lightly.

He knew he still had a criminal mentality, even if he had been steered away from it over thirty years ago, before he’d acquired the criminal record that he surely would have had, and that would have prevented him making his living the way he did. Violence was still a quick and easy answer to most problems, he found. Maybe he should have been more of a disciplinarian at home, he thought. Maybe if Ben had had a clout or two growing up he would have more respect for his wishes now. But he could never have brought himself to lay a finger on Ben.