Chill Factor (25 page)

“That’s OK,” I told him. “They know you’re with me.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” I decided to speed things up. “Did you meet Tony Silkstone while you were in there?” I asked. “He’s one of mine, on remand.”

He grinned and said: “Silko the Salesman? Yeah, I met him.”

“How come?” I asked. “I thought you’d be on separate wings.”

“We were, but we had association. Well, not proper
association
, but we had these classes. Silko took one of them, sometimes, and we all joined. Well, it was an hour out of your room wasn’t it? He couldn’t ’alf talk, about, you know, motivation an’ plannin’ an’ all that. We could all be
millionaires
, ’e told us, without breaking the law. Mind you, ’e did wink when ’e said that last bit.”

“That sounds like Tony,” I remarked.

“Yeah, well. He killed a nonce, didn’t ’e? Good riddance, we all said. Come to think of it, we talked about you, once.”

“About me?”

“Yeah. We were in the classroom, me, ’im and this screw, waiting for the others to arrive. I used to get the room ready, clean the blackboard an’ tidy up. I’d just finished when they walked in. ’E was grumbling to the screw, saying that ’e’d be out, now, if it wasn’t for this cop who was ’ounding ’im. This cop called Inspector Priest. I said that it was you that ’ad done me. That you’d…well, you know.”

“That I’d fitted you up?”

“Yeah, well, summat like that.”

“So what did he say?”

“The screw laughed. He said that you’d just done someone
you were chasing for twenty-odd years. It was in the papers, he said. Summat about a fire.”

“There was a fire in Leeds,” I explained. “Back in 1975. Three women and five children were burnt to death. We just found out who started it.”

“Blimey,” he said, quietly. “You got the bastards?”

“We got them. So what happened next?”

“Yeah, well, like I was saying. The screw thought it was a right giggle. ’E said that if ’e’d done summat wrong the last person ’e’d want on the case was you. ’E said that you never forgot, an’ that ’e ’oped Silkstone was telling the truth, for ’is sake, ’cos ’e’d never be able to sleep at night if ’e wasn’t.”

“Right,” I said. “Right.” My tea was finished and Halliwell was chewing his last piece of toast. “So did Silkstone have anything else to say?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “The others came in, then, an’ we
started
. Come to think of it, though, he wasn’t as chipper as ’e usually was, that lesson.”

I lifted my jacket off the back of the chair and poked an arm down a sleeve. “Do you want a lift back?” I asked.

“No thanks, Mr Priest,” he replied. “I ’ave to be careful what company I keep.”

“Scared of being seen associating with the enemy?”

“Summat like that.”

“I take it you are going back?”

“Dunno.” A little smile played around his mouth, the wrinkles joining up into laughter lines. “Would it get you into trouble if I didn’t?” he asked.

“No,” I lied. “Nothing to do with me.”

“Then I might as well go back.” He stood up, uncurling from the chair and stretching to his full height with a display of effort. “Thanks for the breakfast, an’ the fags. Sorry you ’ad a wasted journey.”

“I’ll give you a lift, if you want one.”

“No, Mr Priest,” he said. “I want to walk down that road like all these other people. Past the shops, an’ all. Enjoy my
freedom while I can. It’s been a long wait.”

“I hope it works out for you, Vince,” I told him. “I really do.”

We walked across the car-park together. As we emerged on to the pavement I said: “Vince.” He turned to face me, his face etched with worry, scared I was about to spring
something
on him. He’d already had enough excitement for this day.

“Tony Silkstone took out a contract on me,” I told him. “He offered someone fifty thousand to kill me. Did you hear anything about it?”

“To…to kill you?” he stuttered. “Fifty thousand to kill you?”

“That’s right. Who did he talk to?”

“Dunno, Mr Priest. First I’ve ’eard of it.”

“He hired a man called Chilcott. You ever heard of him?”

“Chiller? Yeah, I ’eard of ’im, but ’e wasn’t in Bentley.”

“I know. He was abroad. You didn’t hear any talk?”

“No, Mr Priest, not a word. Honest.”

“If you remember anything, get in touch.”

“Yeah, right.”

“OK. Thanks anyway. Mind the road.”

I began to turn away but I heard him say: “’Ere, Mr Priest.”

“Mmm?”

“Is this what it was all about, an’ not the other job?”

“That’s right, Vince. The other job’s history, as far as I’m concerned. We knew who was with you, just couldn’t prove it.”

“So I told you what you wanted to know?”

“You gave me the reason that Silkstone had for wanting me dead. Yes.”

“You devious bastard.”

“I’m a cop,” I said, as if that was a full explanation.

“Fifty Gs, did you say?”

“That’s right. Would you have taken the contract, if you’d
known?”

“No,” he replied. “Not my scene. But I’d ’ave chipped in.”

He had the grace to smile as he said it. I flapped a hand at him and we walked our separate ways. Me back to the car and Heckley, him to his room in jail and the calendar on the wall that said that in two years he’d be let loose, with nobody to order him around, nobody to feed and clothe him.

The sun was in my eyes on the way back. I drove with the visor down, listening to a tape I’d compiled of Mark Knopfler and Pat Metheny. There’d been a shower and the roads were wet, so every lorry I passed turned the
windscreen
into a glaring mixture of splatters and streaks. I stayed in the slow and middle lanes, driving steadily, doing some thinking, my fingers on the wheel tapping in time with ‘Local Hero’ and ‘The Truth Will Always Be’. These days, in this job, you rarely have time to think. Something happens and you react. Time to reflect on the best way to tackle the situation is a luxury.

Halliwell said he would have contributed towards the fifty thousand if he’d known about it. If he’d guessed the truth he’d have donated the full sum. We knew who his accomplice was because we’d arrested him the day before, and he’d turned informer, gushing like a Dales stream about the Big Job he was doing the following night. Halliwell was set up by the man he refused to grass on, and we were
waiting
for him. The gun was a bonus; we hadn’t expected that. It was found afterwards, thrown behind a dustbin on the route Halliwell had taken as he tried to flee the scene. He denied it was his, and we admitted in court that we hadn’t found his fingerprints on it. Because he wouldn’t say who his accomplice was the judge credited him with the weapon and gave him ten years.

I’d give my right arm to be able to make music like that. Not to have to deal with all this shit. Nobody asked us about
the bullets. The gun had been wiped clean but we found a fingerprint on one of the bullets. It belonged to the
accomplice
, who just happened to slip through our fingers. This was eight years ago, before the law changed, and like I said: nobody asked.

Gilbert had some good news for me. A British couple
starting
their annual holiday had been held up at gunpoint
outside
Calais and their car stolen. The hijacker answered Chilcott’s description. As I had grumbled to him every day about my bodyguard Gilbert reluctantly agreed that Chilcott was probably making his way across France and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum could safely return to their normal duties. I didn’t point out that it would also help his staff deployment problems and overtime budget, but I did tell him about my confrontation with Vince Halliwell. Gilbert gave one of his sighs and peered at me over his
half-moon
spectacles. “You’re saying that Silkstone took the
contract
out on you because he wanted you off his case. You have a reputation for never forgetting, and he wanted to be able to sleep at nights. Is that it?”

“In a coconut shell,” I replied.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why does he want you off the case? He’s admitted killing Latham.”

“Because he’s a worried man. He has something to hide. Everybody else is saying: ‘Well done, Tony. You rid the world of a scumbag.’ I’m the only one saying: ‘Whoa up a minute! Maybe he was there with Latham when Margaret died.’”

“You know what the papers are saying, don’t you.”

“That he’s a hero. Yes.”

“And that we’re hounding him unnecessarily.”

“I haven’t started hounding him yet.”

“You really think he was there, when she died?”

“Yes, Gilbert. I do.”

“OK, but play it carefully. Let Jeff take over the everyday stuff, and you spend what time you need on this. And for God’s sake try to keep off the front page of the
UK News
.”

Gilbert’s a toff. He listens to what I have to say and then lets me have my way. If I were too outlandish, way off the mark, he’d step in and keep me on track, but it doesn’t
happen
very often. He protects me from interference by the brass hats at HQ; I protect him from criticism by giving him our best clear-up rate. If you want to commit a murder, don’t do it in Heckley. Don’t do it on my patch. I searched in my drawer for an old diary. I needed some information, the sort they don’t print in text books, and I knew just the person to ask.

Peter Drago lives in Penrith now, but he was born in Halifax and was in the same intake as me. We attended
training
school together and got drunk a few times. He made
sergeant
when I did and inspector shortly after me, but he also made some enemies. With sexual predilections like his, that was a dangerous thing to do. He was eventually caught,
in
flagrante
, by the husband of the bubbly WPC he was making love to in the back of her car, and they had a fist fight.

Next day Drago was busted back to PC and posted to Settle and the WPC told to report to Hooton Pagnell. That’s how things worked in those days. Step out of line and you were immediately transferred to the furthermost corner of the region. It changed when the good citizens of these
far-flung
outposts discovered that the handsome and attractive police officers with the city accents that kept arriving on their doorsteps were all the adulterers and philanderers that the force had to offer. I found his home number and dialled it.

“Fancy doing Great Gable tomorrow?” I asked without ceremony, when he answered.

After a hesitation he said: “That you, Charlie?” No insults, no sparkling repartee, just: “That you, Charlie?”

“The one and only,” I replied. “How are you?”

“Oh, not too bad, you know. And you?”

“The same. So how about it?”

“Great Gable? I’d love to, Charlie, but I’m afraid I won’t be climbing the Gable again for a long time.”

“Why? What’s happened?” This wasn’t the Dragon of old, by a long way. His motto was: if it moved, shag it; if it didn’t, climb it.

“I’ve just come out of hospital. Triple bypass, three weeks ago.”

“Oh, I am sorry, Pete. Which organ?”

“My heart, pillock,” he chuckled.

“What happened? Did you have an attack?”

“Yeah. Collapsed at work, woke up in the cardiac unit with all these masked figures bending over me. Thought I’d been abducted by aliens.”

“I am sorry,” I repeated. “And was it a success? Are you feeling OK now?”

“I’m a bit sore, but otherwise I feel grand.
Right
champion
, in fact.”

“OK,” I said. “We’ll take a rain check on the Gable, but only for six months. Next Easter we’re going up there, you and me, so you’d better get some training in. Understood?”

After a silence he said: “You know, Charlie, that’s the best tonic I’ve had. Next Easter, and sod what the doctors say. It’s a date.”

We chatted for a while, reminiscing about walks we’d done, scrapes we’d shared when we were PCs together. He asked about Dave and his family, and I told him that his daughter Sophie was about to start at Cambridge. Eventually he asked why I’d rung.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” I replied. “It was a bit personal, and I don’t want to excite you.”

“Now you do have to tell me,” he insisted.

“Well,” I said, “it really
is
a bit personal. Are you able to, you know, talk?”

“Yeah, she’s gone for her hair doing. Tell me all about it.”

I didn’t ask who
she
was; Pete’s love life has more dead ends and branch lines than the London Underground. “Well, it’s like this,” I began. “There’s this bloke, and he’s having an affair with a married woman.”

“He’s shagging her?”

“Er, yes.”

“I just wanted to clarify the situation. Sorry, carry on.”

“That’s all right. He sees her every Wednesday afternoon, at her house, while her husband is at work.”

“Presumably this is a purely hypothetical case,” Pete interjected.

“Oh, definitely. Definitely.”

“Right. Go on.”

“Thanks. Now, this woman is in her early forties, and she isn’t on the Pill, so her lover has to take precautions.”

“As a matter of interest, is her lover married?”

“Er, no. As a matter of interest, he isn’t.”

“Has he ever been?”

“Um, yes, as a matter of interest, he has.”

“I think I’m getting the picture. Carry on, please.”

I carried on, loosely describing what we’d found at Mrs Silkstone’s house, speculating how things may have
happened
. I think – I hope – that he eventually realised that I wasn’t one of the protagonists in the whole squalid episode. He gave me the benefit of his experience in these matters, and I was grateful.

It was a long phone call. As we went through the ritual of ending it he said: “Did you ever hear what John Betjemen is supposed to have said on his death bed, Charlie?”

“Something about wishing he’d had more sex, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right, and I agree with him. Get it while you can, Charlie, you’re a long time dead.”

I reminded him about Easter and put the phone down, reflecting on the Pete Drago philosophy: get it while you can. He was a good bloke: intelligent, fair and generous; but something drove him, far harder than it drives most of us.
And, God knows, that’s hard enough. Bob Dylan included rakes in ‘Chimes of Freedom’, his personal version of the Beatitudes:
tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
. I’d never understood why, until now. Maybe he had it right.