Over the Edge (4 page)

‘But you’re certain it’s him?’

‘Certain.’

‘OK. When? When do you want me to do it?’

‘Tomorrow morning, or will you be working?’

‘My son is dead. I think that’s worth a day off work, don’t you, Inspector? And maybe I’ll have another for the funeral. Then I can say good riddance to him once and for all.’

After Monday’s morning prayers in the superintendents office we held our normal meeting in the CID office. It’s when we compare notes to bring each other up to speed, and I hand out any new cases.

‘OK,’ I began. ‘Mr Wood wants a result on the burglaries, so where are we at?’

‘Which burglaries?’ somebody asked.

‘Any of them.’

‘Well,’ Jeff Caton began, ‘as you know, Charlie, we appear to have two different MOs, therefore possibly two teams at work. One is concentrating on properties at the lower end of the scale, mainly in the Sylvan Fields estate, and the others are more mobile and breaking in to more expensive properties.’

I let him rabbit on about the burglaries. Jeff never uses one word if seven will do. Some stolen items had been recovered from Honest John’s secondhand
shop, but the seller had given a false address and Honest John’s description was vague.

‘He’s a lying toad,’ Dave Sparkington informed us all.

Fingerprints had been found at one house, and blood from the glass of a broken window at another, but they weren’t on the database. It was all bread-and butter stuff, like we have all the time. We’d eventually catch someone and put them in court, but they’d be a first-time offender and walk away with probation or community service.

‘As you will have noticed,’ I said when we’d finished with the burglaries, ‘our night ’tec has graciously stayed behind to speak to the meeting. That’s him in the corner, blinking like an owl, for those of you who’ve forgotten what he looks like. Over to you, Rodger.’

Rodger came to Britain from Jamaica as a small boy, but he’s no token black man. He’s my secret weapon. Heckley is a small town, and most of us are probably known to all the villains, but not Rodger. Nobody expects a detective to be black, even if he is six-and-a-half feet tall and dresses like the Duke of Westminster. He and his wife have volunteered to work regular nights, rather than be on differing shift rotas, so they can see more of each other. And, as he sometimes says in a mock West Indies accent: when he puts on his shades and closes his mouth, nobody can see him.

‘There was an RTA on the top road in the early hours of last Thursday,’ he told us, and went on to describe the accident. He read from the milkman’s statement about seeing two sports cars apparently racing a month earlier. ‘This is where it gets interesting,’ he said. ‘Five weeks ago, on September twentieth, thieves stole an MG TF from a house in Tintwistle. Four days later a similar car was hijacked from a young woman in a multi-storey car park in Manchester. Neither car has been seen again, unless they are what the milkman saw.’

‘Hairdressers’ cars,’ someone informed us disdainfully.

‘The 1.8VV’s a flyer,’ one of the younger members protested.

‘If you call nought to 60 in 7.7 flying.’

‘Whoa!’ I interrupted. ‘We’re not discussing the merits of MGs. Carry on, Rodge.’

‘OK. Now we come up-to-date. Two weeks ago, October 7, a blue Volkswagen GTi was stolen from a house in Leeds. Like the first MG, the house was broken into and the keys taken. Three evenings later a similar car, but coloured black, was hijacked from a 25-year-old man outside Marsden station. The blue car was the one involved in the RTA, Thursday morning. Saturday morning the black one was found burnt-out on the edge of Heckley park.’

‘They’re stealing them to order,’ someone suggested.

‘In pairs – his and hers,’ another added.

‘The MGs were probably re-plated and passed on, so why did they torch the Golf?’

‘Because of the accident? Maybe they thought it was too hot.’

‘Was he running away from anything?’

‘Nothing we know about,’ I replied. ‘It’d been a quiet night.’

It was all conjecture. I told them about Dale, the money and the gun, and asked Maggie Maddison to do the honours at the mortuary with the grieving mother. ‘I don t think you’ll need the box of tissues,’ I told her when she gave me that
why me
?
look. ‘She actually used the words “good riddance”.’

‘Rodge wants to stay on this,’ I said, ‘so we need a new night ’tec. Can I have a volunteer, please?’

The first person whose eyes I caught nodded and said: ‘I could do with a rest.’

‘Thanks. Maggie and John, could you work with Rodge? I’d concentrate on Dobson’s background, associates,
etcetera
. You know the score. Then maybe try to trace his route while things are fresh in people’s minds. People may have heard the car, or cars, go by.’

The route was easier to trace than expected. There are early risers, there are insomniacs and there are people who drag themselves reluctandy out of their pit, morning after morning, year after year, to travel
to some tedious job that they hate. For all of them, a car careering by at over a hundred miles per hour was a break with routine and therefore memorable. Rodger, Maggie and John worked backwards from the scene of the accident. At each junction they would take a road each and knock on doors. One of them would soon strike gold, and off they would go to the next junction. Slowly, they found themselves working their way over the tops into the outskirts of Greater Manchester. On Tuesday an appeal was made on local radio and more sightings and hearings came in. Dozens of them. By Wednesday we had the route of Dobson’s last journey, with a few gaps, marked on a map on the office wall.

There’d been two cars, and they’d gone round in a big circle, starting and finishing at Heckley, except that Dobson didn’t quite make it all the way. They’d driven south, skirting Huddersfield and Holmfirth, then headed over Saddleworth Moor into Lancashire. We lost them in one or two places but the return journey brought them back over the tops on the Oldfield Road. Maggie took me round and it measured 45 miles.

On the way we stopped at the crash scene to look at the flowers: spray after spray in their cellophane wrappings, stretching along the verge for fifteen yards. I don’t know if it was hay fever or the sandwich I’d had in the canteen, but I felt unwell. It
must have been hay fever, psychosomatic perhaps, brought on by the sight of all those blooms for a man whose mother had said good riddance to. When it was my turn to shrug off
this mortal coil
the force would chip together to send a wreath, and that would be it. If I’d lived a while after retirement, and memories had faded, pensions branch would remind them about me.

‘Someone loved him,’ Maggie said, reading one of the dedications.

‘It looks like it,’ I replied, adding: ‘Soon as you get chance come back up and collect all the cards.’

In the car I said: ‘So you’ve decided they were racing.’

‘It looks like it,’ Maggie replied. ‘Two identical cars, going nowhere, and the same thing a month ago. Early in the morning when the roads are at their quietest. The gypsies used to do it years ago, with ponies and traps. You remember.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘And huge sums were gambled on the outcome. I wonder if that’s what this was about.’

‘It’s what Rodger thinks.’

‘He could be right. I spoke to the pathologist this morning.’

‘And…?’

‘Death by multiple injuries consistent with a high-speed motor traffic accident. Traces of alcohol and cocaine in his blood. Minute traces, well below
the legal limit for alcohol.’

‘Just enough to give him an edge?’ Maggie suggested.

‘Could be.’

‘In which case he was taking it very seriously. Professional, even.’

‘It’s possible. Oh, and he’s a long-term marijuana user.’

‘Has anything come back about the gun?’

‘Yeah. It’s a reactivated Glock, but there’s no history for it. Bear it in mind: we’re dealing with dangerous people. The money came to
£
500 exactly, in used twenties. Sparky said that’s peanuts these days. Kids go out with that much in their back pockets. A few fingerprints but I haven’t had a report on any matches.’

We were having tea and sausage rolls in the canteen when Maggie asked: ‘How’s Rosie? Have you seen her lately?’

It was between break times and there was nobody else in there, except the serving lady. ‘No,’ I replied, squeezing too much brown sauce onto my plate. ‘I rang her last week and she said she’s OK.’

‘But she didn’t want to continue the relationship?’

‘No.’

Rosie Barraclough teaches geography and geology at my old school – Heckley Grammar. We’d gone out for a while but Rosie had called it off. She
had, she said, too much baggage. My attempts to help her turned to ashes and Rosie was caught in a cycle of depression and remission that was
never-ending
. Much of the time she was delightful company – amusing and mischievous, with a giggling laugh that had people sitting nearby turning their heads and joining in the fun. But then the memories, the ghosts, would return and soon she’d be back to blaming herself for the sins of the world.

‘I’m worried about her,’ I said. ‘I think she needs help, if help exists for that sort of thing.’

‘Pills,’ Maggie stated. ‘They work for some people, turn others into zombies.’

‘We’ve talked about it, but she says she needs her wits about her when she’s in front of 30-odd teenagers, talking about grain production in Estonia.’

‘God, I bet she does. Is she back at school?’

‘Yes, went back for the new term. I rang her the first day to see how it had gone and she was happy enough with things.’

‘But she didn’t want to see you?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to see her, Charlie?’

‘I’m not sure, Maggie. Not sure at all. Well, yes I do, but…’

‘You could do without the hassle.’

‘I suppose so. I like her, like her a lot, and I want to help her.’

‘But you don’t know what you’d be taking on.’

‘It sounds underhand, selfish, when you put it like that, but you could be right. I’d risk it, Maggie, believe me, I’d risk it, but maybe it’s all for the best.’

Maggie smiled at me. ‘No it’s not, Charlie, and you don’t believe it is, either. Talk to her. That can’t do any harm, can it? Talking about things is usually the best way. Invite her out on a foursome, or dinner at our place.’ She jumped to her feet. ‘Can’t stay here all day chatting or I’ll have the boss on to me. Got some doors to knock on.’

I met Rosie when I took an evening class about local geology. I do a lot of walking, and like to know what’s under my feet and all around me. When the course ended I took her out a few times. The truth was, I’d have done anything for her. She’d had a tough life, with lots of disappointments, and had her problems, but she’d the figure of a
fifteen-year
-old schoolgirl and a grin that could halt a charging traffic warden at fifty paces. Her hair was silver and cropped short, and she wore scarlet jeans. My favourite memory was of her waving her geologist’s hammer at me, saying: ‘Ammonites! Ammonites! Bah!’ just because I misidentified a fossil. Every sixth-former in Heckley Grammar was in love with her, and at least one old boy.

There was no evidence that any other vehicle was involved so the inquest into the death of Dale Dobson rubber-stamped a misadventure verdict on him. We’d had a word with the coroner about the possibility that he’d been involved in a race but as the other vehicle was apparently miles away at the time of the crash this wasn’t mentioned in open court. I told the coroner about the fingerprints and DNA, Mrs Dobson confirmed that the body she’d seen was her son, and the coroner released it for disposal. As we emerged into the weak sunlight I caught up with Mrs Dobson and offered her a lift home.

It wasn’t far, and we drove most of the way in silence. I prompted her to speak about Dale but she was deep in her own thoughts. ‘You don’t know who he was working for, or associating with?’ I asked, but she just shook her head and mumbled an apology.

‘Has anybody contacted you, with messages of condolence or anything?’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘That’s OK, but if anybody does will you let me know, please?’

‘Yes.’

I stopped at her door and wrote my name on a CID card for her. She took it from me and unfastened her seatbelt, hesitating, not sure what to say. I thought she was going to ask me in for a cup
of tea, which I would have politely declined, but she said: ‘The funeral. Who’ll pay for the funeral? I can’t afford it.’

On the way back to the nick I got caught in the school run at Heckley’s only private education establishment, and what should have been a
fifteen-minute
journey took me nearly seventeen. I marched into the office complaining: ‘What time do they finish at the Valleyside School for Young Ladies and Gentlemen, these days? In my day it was strictly nine till four. They only do half a shift.’

There were nods of agreement. ‘And they get taken both ways in a four-by-four,’ someone said.

‘Well, you can’t expect little Coriander and Battenburg to walk there, can you?’ another added.

‘No, you mean Mezzanine and Lintel.’

‘Or Hernia and Placenta.’

‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘Any messages?’

‘On your desk. One of your women wants you to ring her. How’d it go?’

‘As expected. Misadventure.’

I took my jacket off, trying to look nonchalant, and hung it behind my door. Back in the big office I spooned coffee into a mug and pressed the button on the kettle. When I’d made myself a brew I returned to my office and just happened to read the message.

It was from Mrs Dobson, Dale’s mother. Not
what I’d been hoping for. Would I ring her? Ah well, I thought, we live in hope. It was timed fifteen minutes ago, not long after I’d dropped her off. I dialled her number.

‘There was a note for me,’ she said, recognising my voice. ‘A letter, been put through my letterbox. No stamp on it. It says:
Arrange a funeral with Golden Sunsets Funeral Directors. The bill will be taken care of
. That’s all.’