Chill Factor (26 page)

We had a killing through the week. A youth was stabbed to death in the town centre, and my heart sank when I learned that he was from the Asian community. I breathed again when it was revealed that his attacker was his brother-in-law, and it was all about family honour. I’m only interested in guilty or not guilty, and was relieved not to have a race war on my hands. Family feuds I can deal with. Saturday lunchtime I tidied my desk and fled, rejoicing at my
new-found
freedom, eager to be out in the fresh air. I drove to Burnsall, one of the most attractive Dales villages, and donned my boots. The route I took was loop-shaped, through Thorpe and Linton to Bow Bridge, then following the Wharfe back to the village. It’s a beautiful river,
sometimes
rushing over boulders, sometimes carving deep languid pools and sandbanks. Dippers used to be
common-place
, not very long ago, and I’ve seen the kingfisher there. The morning showers had passed over, and the afternoon sun made the meadows steam.

There were lots of people about. It’s a popular place, and the last flush of summer always brings us out, determined to stock up on the beneficial rays before the dark nights close in. A group of people were vacating some rocks at the side of the water, packing their picnic remnants into Tupperware boxes and rucksacks. It was a good spot, in a patch of
sunshine
, with trees on the opposite side and the river gabbling noisily. Very therapeutic. I moved in after them, heading for a seat on a dry boulder, and as I sat down a dead twig,
brittle
as egg shells, snapped under my feet.

I’d called in Marks and Spencer’s when I left the office, for a prawn sandwich and a packet of Eccles cakes. I wolfed them down with a can of flavoured mineral water, sitting
there watching the stream go by. Swallows were skimming the surface, stocking up on flies before their long journey south, and a fish made ripples, out in the middle where it flowed more slowly.

There weren’t many places that I would rather have been, but there’s more to happiness than that. I wondered if Annette were doing something similar, picnicking with another man and his children as a different river slid past them. I leaned forward and picked up a piece of the branch I’d stepped on. It was about four inches long, dead as last week’s scandal and encrusted with lichen. I tossed it,
underhand
, out into the stream.

It hardly made a splash and bobbed up and down,
buoyant
as a cork, until the current took hold and pushed it into the flow, heading towards a cleft between two rocks. I watched it accelerate towards them, turning as opposing forces caught and juggled with it. It entered the chute between the rocks, one end riding high, and plunged over the mini-waterfall.

The pressure held it down and the undertow pulled it back. There was a wrestling match between the flow of water and the buoyancy of the twig, but there could only be one result. After a few seconds it broke free of the water’s grip and burst to the surface. I watched it rotate in the current like an ice skater taking a bow and nod away towards the North Sea, eighty miles down river.

I couldn’t do it again. I broke another piece off the branch and threw it into the stream, but it was swept straight through the rocks and away. I tried bigger pieces and
smaller
ones, with variable quantities of lichen, but it didn’t work. It was the balance that was important. Big twigs were more buoyant, but the water had more to press down on. On the other hand, the lichen provided drag, which should have helped the water. I tossed another piece into the stream and watched it slide away.

“My, that looks good fun,” a voice said, behind me.

I turned, squinting into the sun, and saw an elderly
couple
standing there. They were wearing lime green and blue anoraks, and had two pale Labradors on extending leads, which they’d thoughtfully reeled in as they’d approached me.

“Hello,” I said. “I didn’t hear you. Isn’t it a nice day.”

“Wonderful,” the man said. “So what is it? Pooh sticks?”

“You need a bridge for that,” I told him. “No, I was just doing some experiments, studying elementary hydraulics.”

“Elementary hydraulics, eh. And I thought it was at least Life, Death and the Universe.”

“No, not quite. Are you going far?”

“Only to the footbridge and back. And you?”

“I walked up to Bow Bridge, and I’m heading back to Burnsall. Far enough for this afternoon.”

“Well enjoy your experiments,” he said. “Hope we didn’t disturb you.”

“Not at all. Enjoy your walk.” His wife gave me a special smile. She was attractive, had once been beautiful. Probably still was, when you knew her. I watched them stroll away, the dogs leaping about on long leads now, biting each other’s necks. It was easy to forgive them their matching anoraks.

No, I thought, as I hooked my rucksack over my
shoulder
. Not Life, Death and the Universe. Just Life, Death and Elementary Hydraulics.

Monday morning Superintendent Isles gave me permission to interview Jason Lee Gelder at HQ, where he was being held. I cleared my diary and reallocated a few tasks to accommodate him. Dave had driven to Cambridge over the weekend, to look at Sophie’s room in the students’ quarters. He was a lot happier now that he knew where she’d be
staying
, and told us all what a smashing place it was. Expecting displays of enthusiasm from him is normally like expecting impartial advice from your bank manager, but today he was full of it. I decided to attempt to harness the quality.

“And I’ve a special little job for you, Sunshine,” I told him.

“Like what?” he asked. From him, that’s eager.

“One I wouldn’t trust to anybody else.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good. I want you to go to Boots and buy one hundred condoms.”

“A hundred condoms!”

“That’s right. You can put them on your expenses.”

“You want me to buy a hundred French letters and put them on my expenses?”

“That’s what I said.”

“You can cocoa!”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I! Go buy them yourself.”

I found a notebook with empty pages and put it in my pocket with a couple of fibre-tipped pens. “You just can’t get the staff,” I said standing up and sliding my chair under the desk.

Sparky had his cheeky grin on. “So, er, things are looking up, are they?” he asked.

“No, they’re not,” I snapped, adding: “If you want a job doing properly, do it yourself.”

“Why a hundred?” he asked. “With your luck a packet of
three would last you until the use-before date.”

“You can be very hurtful,” I told him, opening the door and switching the light off.

“Yeah, it was a bit. Sorry.”

“That’s OK. How much are they, these days?”

“Johnnies? A pound for two from the machine in the Spinners’ bog.”

“Is that plain or flavoured?”

“Plain. The flavoured are two quid for three.”

“You seem to know all about them.”

“I read the machine while I’m having a pee. What do you do?”

“Try to drown a fly. That’d be fifty quid, and I’d have to go to the bank for coins. And then the machine would run out and I’d have to ask the barman for my money back. It’ll have to be a chemist’s.”

“Are you serious?” he demanded.

“Never more. Want to change your mind?”

“No.”

“Fair enough, but I’ll have to put it on your record. I’m off to HQ, to talk to young Mr Gelder. Try not to breach too many guidelines while I’m gone.”

I parked in town and went to Boots. The condoms were on the self-service shelves but there was a small queue at the pay counter, so I wandered around for a few minutes until it had gone. Fetherlites came in packs of a dozen, costing £8.85, so I’d have to buy…I did the mental arithmetic…six twelves are seventy-two, seven twelves are eighty-four, eight twelves are ninety-six…nine, I’d have to buy nine packs, which would leave eight condoms over. Ah well, they might come in handy, some day.

The queue had gone so I gathered up a handful of
packets
. Dammit! There were only eight on display. Ninety-six. That meant I needed two packets of three to make up the shortfall. I added them to my collection and headed towards the counter.

A woman got there before me, but that was OK. I fell in behind her, my purchases clutched to my body, as she
handed
over a brown bottle of tablets and a ten pound note. The grey-haired assistant looked at the bottle and turned towards the glassed-off enclave where the pharmacist was busy counting pills.

“Paracetamol!” she shouted, and he raised his head and nodded his consent to the sale.

A wave of panic swept through me. Was she about to yell “Condoms!” to all and sundry when she saw what I was
buying
? “You know that they contain paracetamol, don’t you?” she told the customer, who said that she did. Personally, I’d have thought that that was why she was buying them. And as it said
Paracetamol
in large letters across the label, it seemed not unreasonable to assume that she knew the chief ingredient.

“Can I, er, take those, please,” I mumbled, when it was my turn, half expecting her to warn me that I’d never make a baby if I wore one of these, on the off-chance that I was a lapsing Catholic. I passed the bundle two-handed across the glass-topped counter, followed by my credit card. She was counting them when the phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said, placing my goods in a neat pile and turning to answer it. Unfortunately Durex packs are shiny and rounded, and don’t stack up well. They slid over and spread-eagled themselves across the counter, fanning out like a hand of cards. I turned and smiled guiltily at the baby in the arms of the young girl who headed the queue that was forming behind me. The girl smiled back at me.

Seventy-six flippin’ quid they cost. And thirty pence. I grabbed the bag that the assistant handed over and turned to flee, only glancing at the five women and two men in the queue behind me enough to notice that the last man looked suspiciously like my window cleaner. As I passed him he touched my sleeve. I turned to say hello, but he just said “Receipt.”

“Pardon?”

“You forgot your receipt.”

“Oh, thanks.” I went back to the counter and the
grey-haired
assistant passed it to me. I felt as if I ought to make a witty remark, but she was already listening to her next customer.

Jason Lee Gelder wasn’t what I’d expected. I try not to be fooled by first impressions, but he took me for a ride. I shook hands with his brief, the duty solicitor, when he
introduced
himself, although we meet nearly as often as the swing doors down at the Job Centre, and sat down opposite them.

“Is it Jason or Lee?” I asked.

“Er, Jason,” he replied. He had the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen, short fair hair in a sensible style, a high forehead and a full mouth and jaw-line. When it came to looks, he was a heart-breaker, and I could imagine the girls falling for him like lemmings off a cliff. But nature gives with one hand and takes away with the other.

“Right, Jason,” I began. “Are they looking after you well?”

“Er, yeah.”

“I see they’ve given you your own clothes back.”

“Er, yeah.”

“We were allowed to collect some from his home,” the solicitor explained, “but most of his clothes are with your forensic people.”

“For tests,” I told Jason. “We do tests on them.” Before either of them could speak again I said: “This is an informal interview, to clear up a few things about this and another case. We are not recording or taking notes, but I have to tell you, Jason, that you are still under caution and anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence. Do you
understand
?”

“Yeah,” he said, which meant that he was probably the only one of us who did.

“Which newspapers do you read, Jason?” I asked.

He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat and stared down at somewhere near his navel.

“
The Sun
?” I suggested. “Or the
Sunday Sport
?”

He shook his head and curled up even more.

“If I may,” the solicitor interrupted. “Jason has reading difficulties. He doesn’t buy a newspaper.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, taken aback for a moment. Then I remembered the magazines that were found in his room. “You like pictures, though, don’t you?” I asked. “Which paper has the best girls in it? Tell me that, Jason.”

“Dunno,” he mumbled.

“But you look at them?”

“I suppose so.”

“Which ones?”

“Dunno.”

“Where do you see them?”

“All over.”

“Such as?”

“Anywhere.”

“Tell me, Jason. I’m trying to help you.”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked towards his brief for help. The solicitor waved a palm towards me in a gesture that said: “For God’s sake tell the man.”

“In the pub,” he replied.

“What?” I began. “You mean, people leave them in the pub and you collect them?”

“I don’t collect them. I just ’ave a look.”

“Where else?”

“Mates’ ’ouses. All over.”

“Which papers do you like best?”

“I dunno. They’re all the same.”

“
The Sport
?”

“Sometimes.”

“The
UK News
? Do you like the
UK News
, Jason?”

“Dunno if I do or not.”

“Where do you get your magazines from?”

“From mates.”

“Do you buy them?”

“No. We just swap them.”

It always looks good in the report of a trial:
Police found a number of pornographic magazines in the accused’s house
. Of course we did, because they’re all over the place. There isn’t an establishment in the country that employs a majority of males where you couldn’t find some sort of unofficial library of top-shelf literature, and that includes most police
stations
. Jason would have been more interesting to the
psychiatric
profession if we
hadn
’t found any sex books at his home.

“Tell me about your girlfriends,” I suggested.

“’Aven’t got one,” he replied.

“But you’ve had one, haven’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Good looking lad like you,” I said. “With a little car. Wouldn’t have thought you’d have any problem pulling the birds. Am I right?”

“Sometimes.”

“Who was your last girlfriend?”

“Can’t remember.”

“Can’t or won’t? How long since you last had a girl in the car, Jason?”

He thought about it, his brow a rubbing-board of furrows. “’Bout three weeks,” he eventually volunteered. “Maybe a bit longer.”

“So that would be before Marie-Claire Hollingbrook was murdered,” I said.

“Yeah. ’Bout a week before.”

“How did you learn about her murder?”

“In the pub. They were talking about it in the pub.”

“Did you know her?”

“No.”

“Did you ever see her?”

“No.”

“So you didn’t recognise her from her picture in the papers?”

“No.”

The solicitor leaned forward and said: “Inspector, could you possibly explain where this line of enquiry is leading? My client has strenuously denied any knowledge of Miss Hollingbrook or any involvement in her death. There are several hours of taped interviews in which he answers all questions fully and satisfactorily.”

“There is some rather heavy evidence against your client,” I pointed out.

“Which is being contested,” he rejoined. “There are precedents, Inspector, in which DNA evidence has been
discredited
. We are currently investigating the whole procedure for taking and examining samples from both the crime scene and witnesses.”

Here we go, I thought. O.J. Simpson all over again. O.J. bloody Simpson. It wasn’t my job to give him lines of defence, so I just accepted what he said. I turned back to Jason and asked: “What was this girl called that you last went out with?”

“Dunno,” he replied.

“You don’t know? Didn’t you ask?”

“Yeah, but I’ve forgotten.”

“Well try to remember. It could be important.”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“OK. Let’s go through it. Where did you meet her?”

“At that club in Heckley with the daft name.”

“The Aspidistra Lounge.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Go there a lot, do you?”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“What nights?”

“Sometimes Thursdays, and most Fridays.”

“And what night did you meet this girl?”

“Not sure. Think it was Friday.”

“So what did you do?”

“What did we do?” he asked, looking even more
bewildered
.

“Did you dance?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“Buy her a drink?”

“Yeah.”

“What did she drink?”

“Lager. And Blastaways.”

“Blastaways. Right.” I knew that was a sickly
combination
of cider and a ready-made cocktail called a Castaway. “And did you ask her name?”

“I suppose so.”

“Which was?”

“Can’t remember.”

It’s at times like this that I wished I smoked. I could take out the packet of Sobranies, flick one between my lips, light it with my gold-plated Zippo and inhale a long satisfying lungful of nicotine-laden smoke. All I’d have to worry about was an early grave from cancer, not trying to keep an uncommunicative twerp like Jason from spending the rest of his natural being used as a trampoline in an open prison.

“Did you take her home?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Straight home?”

“Er, no.”

“Where did you go?”

“To the brickyard.”

Atkinson’s brickyard was long gone, but the name
lingered
on. It was now a lawned-over picnic site, only the red shards poking through the grass indicating its industrial past. More people meet there after dark for sex than ever eat at the primitive tables during daylight hours.

“Did you have sex with her?”

“Yeah.”

“In the back seat?”

“No, in the front.”

“Really! Wouldn’t you have found it more comfortable in the back?”

“Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“We just started, you know, snogging, in the front, and that was it.”

“You were carried away.”

“Yeah. Well, she was. Dead eager for it, she was.”

“She took the initiative?”

“Yeah.”

I expected his brief to interrupt, but I think he was as
fascinated
as I was by the sexual mores of the young. I dragged the conversation back on course. “Was she on the Pill?” I asked.

“No.”

“So what did you do? Risk it?”

“No.”

“You’d gone prepared.”

“Yeah.”

“Very commendable. So did you arrange to see her again?”

“Not really. I said I might see ’er in the…the whatsit, the club.”

“You don’t sound as if you were keen. Why not?”

“Because she was a slag, that’s why.”

“But you must have asked her name.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Which was…?”

“Can’t remember.”