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‘No real interest, Dog,’ said Tench with mock solemnity. ‘Nothing that I’d call an interest. Just that she’s on a little list of ours. People with a fine thread tied to their tails. Touch ’em and there’s a little tinkle in the guardroom, know what I mean?’
‘The computer?’ said Dog. ‘I wondered why that entry was there. Anyone asking questions jerks the trip wire, right?’
‘Clever boy,’ said Tench. ‘So tell me all you know.’
Briefly, Dog outlined his investigation so far.
Tench produced a notebook, not to make notes in but to examine.
‘Well done,’ he said at the end of the outline. ‘Missed out nothing.’
‘You’ve spoken to Parslow? You knew all this! What the hell are you playing at? Checking up on me or what?’
‘Hold your horses, my son,’ said Tench earnestly. ‘Not you. Old Eddie Parslow, he’s the one we need to double check. He’s so demob happy, he’s stopped taking bribes.’
The muscular boy came out of the bedroom. In his hand was a foolscap-size buff envelope.
‘Found this in the mattress cover, guv,’ he said, handing it over.
‘Well done, my son,’ said Tench, smiling fondly.
‘You want I should organize a real search, guv?’ asked Stott.
Dog Cicero had no doubt what a real search meant. He’d supervised enough in scruffy Belfast terraces and lonely country farms, watching as floorboards were ripped up, tiles stripped, walls probed, while all around women wailed their woe or screamed abuse, and men stood still as stone, their faces set in silent hate.
Tench shook his head.
‘Early days, Tommy. Just carry on poking around.’
Tommy went into the kitchen. A second later what sounded like the contents of a cutlery drawer hit the tiled floor.
Tench was peering into the envelope.
‘What’s in it?’ asked Dog.
‘Not a lot. Hello. Must be saving for a rainy day. Well, the poor cow’s got her rain. Bet she’d like to get her hands on her savings!’
He tossed a smaller envelope across to Dog. He opened it. It was full of bank notes, large denomination dollar bills and sterling in equal quantities, at least a couple of thousand pounds’ worth.
‘Can see what you’re thinking, Dog. That’s a lot of relief massage. Maybe she upped her prices for more demanding punters. Any complaints about queues forming on the stairs?’
He looked at Dog with his head cocked to one side, like a jolly uncle encouraging a favourite nephew.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that. Not so for.’
The last phrase was an attempt to compensate for what had come out as a rather over-emphatic denial.
Tench caught the nuance, said, ‘You don’t think she gives the full service then? Just the odd hand job for pocket money?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t like running too far ahead of the evidence, that’s all.’
‘Oh yeah? Of course, she’s Irish, isn’t she?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Quite a lot, as it happens, my son. But in your case, it could mean you’re so desperate to put the slag away that you’re falling over backwards to be fair. You never were much good at thumping people just because you didn’t like them, Dog. Always had to find a reason! You’ll not admit it, but what you’d really like is solid evidence that she’s topped her little bastard, then you can go after her full pelt! Well, you can relax, my boy. Uncle Toby is here to tell you it’s going to be all right. It doesn’t matter if she’s cut his throat or she’s the loveliest mum since the Virgin Mary. You’re allowed to hate her guts either way!’
Dog was half out of his chair. One part of his mind was telling him to sit down and laugh at this provocation. The other was wondering how much damage he could inflict before Tommy, the gorgeous hulk, broke him in two.
Tench wasn’t smiling now.
‘Down, Dog. Down. If you don’t like a joke, you shouldn’t have joined. Man who’s not in charge of himself ain’t fit to be in charge of anything.’
Slowly Dog relaxed, sank back into the armchair.
‘That’s better. Godalmighty, just think, if you’d stayed in the Army, you’d have had your own company by now, maybe your own battalion. You’d have been sending men out where the flak was flying. Few more like you, and I reckon we’d have lost the Falklands. Still, not to worry, just think of the money we’d have saved!’
Dog said steadily, ‘Don’t you think it’s time you put me in the picture, sir. You called the boy a bastard. I presume you were being literal rather than figurative.’
‘I love it when you talk nice, Dog. Shows all that time in the officers’ mess wasn’t wasted. But yes, you’re dead right. Bastard he is, or was. One thing we know for sure, Maguire never got married. How do we know? Well, Oliver Beck was never divorced, was he? Let me fill you in, old son. After she jacked in the teaching, our Jane got herself a job with a shipping line, recreational officer they called it. On one Atlantic crossing she came in contact with an American passenger, Mr Oliver Beck. On the massage table, I shouldn’t wonder! Anyway, he was so impressed with her technique, he set her up in his house on Cape Cod. Oliver was living apart from his wife, natch.’
‘So it was more than just a bit on the side for him?’ interrupted Dog.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘He took her into his home. They had a child.’
‘Rather than setting her up in a flat and having an abortion? You could be right, Dog. Or maybe he just wanted a son and heir and didn’t much mind who the brood mare was. We don’t know just how close they really were, and it’s of the essence as you’ll see if you sit stumm for a few minutes. They certainly stuck together for the next five years. On the other hand he was away a lot and a live-in fanny probably comes as cheap as a live-in nanny. To cut a short story shorter, last April Oliver Beck snuffed it. He was a sailing freak, always shouting off he could’ve done the round-the-world-single-handed if he’d only had the time. This time he didn’t get out of Cape Cod Bay before a storm tipped him over, and put the Atlantic where his mouth was. Now came crunch time for our Janey. Who’d inherit?’
He paused dramatically. Dog said, ‘I thought this was the short version.’
‘Satire, is it?’ twinkled Tench. ‘All right. Well, it certainly wasn’t Maguire. There was no will and in less time than it takes to say conjugal rights, the real Mrs Beck came swanning in to claim everything. At least she wanted to, only at just about the same time, the Internal Revenue boys turned up too, and they were claiming everything times ten for unpaid taxes. Our Janey summed up the situation pretty well. There was nothing in it for her, so she upped sticks and headed for home, taking with her every cent she could lay her hands on plus everything portable in terms of jewellery, objets d’art et cetera. Only thing was, none of it belonged to her officially, and if she shows her face again back in Massachusetts she’ll find a warrant for her arrest waiting.’
He looked at Dog as though inviting a comment.
‘She was in a tough situation,’ he said. ‘She was entitled to something, surely.’
‘You reckon? Still falling backwards to be fair, are we, Dog? Even though this lady has an undeniable tendency to violence, an undeniable tendency to help herself to what ain’t hers, and an undeniable tendency to pull men’s plonkers for pocket money? Jesus, Dog, it’s the priesthood you should have turned to, not the police!’
‘You still haven’t said what your interest is, sir,’ said Dog.
‘Haven’t I? Neither I have! The thing is this, Dog. It wasn’t just the IRS who were keeping a friendly eye on Oliver Beck. It was the FBI. You see – this’ll slay you, Dog – it appears that one of the many shady ways that Beck earned his crust was by acting as a bagman for Noraid. I knew you’d like it! Now no one knows how much Janey was involved but one thing’s sure, she can’t have been ignorant. So now you can really let all that nasty bubbling hate go free, my son. You see, the money that kept that slag in silk knickers, maybe even those nice crisp folders you’ve got in your hand, all came from his commission moving the cash which bought the Semtex that cut your shaving bills in half for the rest of your natural life!’
10 (#ulink_a4c5f090-8eb7-54a6-9a66-ae150cc7ffd8)
Jane Maguire stood in a telephone kiosk in Basildon town centre. She could have been anywhere. One of the new towns built after the war to ease the pressure on London, its designers probably comforted themselves with the thought that a couple of hundred years would give it the feel of a real place. But in the decades that followed, up and down the country they had ripped the guts out of towns and implanted pedestrian precincts lined with exactly the same shops that she was looking at here. Why let the new grow old gracefully when you can make the old grow young grotesquely?
The thought wasn’t hers but standing here brought it back to mind, and the dry amused voice that spoke it. She longed to hear it now at the end of the phone, but the ringing went on and on. Abruptly she replaced the receiver.
It was time to move. The journey, though not long, had dulled the impression of the man in the tweed hat. Was he watching her or was it just her terror and guilt which needed some visible object to slacken the pressure within? No matter. Her mind had gone beyond rationality. Almost beyond pain. She needed a safe place to curl up in till she was able to plan the future – and feel the agony – once more.
She started walking away from the commercial lights. She could have got a taxi where the bus had dropped her but she had felt a need for movement without confinement. The rain had grown finer till at last its threads wove themselves together into a silky mist which clung just as dampeningly but at least did not lash the exposed skin. She found herself walking faster and faster till suddenly, without conscious decision, she was running. Her newly bought clothing constrained her, particularly the waxed coat, and she felt an urge to pull it off, to pull everything off, and run with no restraint, as sometimes secretly she had done in the past when her cross-country training had taken her on a safe, secluded route.
But here even a fully clothed woman running was going to attract notice. In fact in these conditions a woman walking, once she left the lights of the town behind, was likely to draw attention, both friendly and unfriendly. She slowed to a steady walk, pulled her hood up over her head, and tried to swing her shoulders with the aggressive rhythm of a man.
A car passed, slowed, picked up speed. A lorry thundered by, almost upending her with its blast. A van drew alongside, matching her pace. A window was wound down and a voice said, ‘Like a lift, mate?’
She shook her head, or rather her hood, vigorously and grunted a no in the lowest register she could manage.
‘Please yourself,’ said the voice, and the van drew away.
She reached a crossroads, turned left on a narrower minor road, and after a traffic-free half a mile, she climbed over a gate into a field. By daylight she was sure she could have walked this path with her eyes closed. But with the pressing damp darkness closing her eyes against her will, things were very different. Her feet were slipping and slithering in the muddy ground and eventually she felt one of them sink in so deeply that the cold mud oozed over her new footwear.
But her memory had not failed her. In mid-stride she hit the high wire fence, and clung on to it to stop herself falling as she bounced back.
Slowly she moved to the left till she reached a metal support post. She let her hand run down it to three feet from the bottom. Then she reached through the mesh.
For a moment she thought it was the wrong post. Then she found the loose staple and slipped it out. In a changing world some things didn’t change. She tried to think of another, failed, slid through the gap she was able to force in the fence, refixed it behind her, and set off now with perfect confidence at a forty-five-degree diagonal.
There was a light ahead, the dim glow of a curtained window. She made for it, feeling a great sense of relief. The unanswered phone had been a worry. Even though she had a key, she would have felt uneasy about using it uninvited after the bitter words she’d flung over her shoulder last time she’d departed from here.
Now there was concrete underfoot once more. She moved forward swiftly and as she passed the curtained window, she gave it the double rap with which she usually presaged her arrival.
Inside there was movement and as she approached the door, it opened.
There was no light on in the hallway and for a second she hesitated, unable clearly to make out the dimly silhouetted figure that awaited her there.
Then it moved forward, and the dark was light enough for her to recognize the stubbly blond hair, the bright blue eyes, the slightly crooked and very attractive smile as he reached out his arms and said, ‘Hello, Jane. I’ve been expecting you.’
11 (#ulink_74519192-8ff7-5120-961f-95f2613b817c)
It was a lousy night for driving. Traffic was heavy and the rain had thinned to a glutinous mist which speeding juggernauts layered across his windscreen. It felt like a pointless journey. Far simpler would have been to ask the local force to talk with Mrs Maguire and keep an eye on her house in case her daughter returned. Instead here he was letting himself be carried along at eighty in the outside lane on the doubtful grounds that if he got involved in a pile-up, he’d prefer it to be fatal.
So why was he doing it? Possibly to escape from Tench. Or, more accurately, to escape from what he feared Tench might provoke him to. To be fair to the man, he had laid it on the line.
‘The way I see it, Dog, it’s likely I’m wasting my time. Could be she’s just got so strung out taking care of the brat that she hit him too hard, and he snuffed it. Happens more and more, especially with a boy friend around. Could be she’s telling the truth, even though there’s no witnesses, and some weirdo’s snatched the kid. Could be that none of this has got the slightest to do with the late Ollie Beck and his Irish connections. In which case, I’ll be more than happy to say, over to you, Mr Plod, and get back to the bright lights. But until I do, you’d better understand this is my case, my son, and you don’t do nothing that hasn’t been agreed with me first. OK?’
Parslow, when consulted, had said, ‘Can’t argue with the Branch, Dog. National Security, and all that.’
‘More like National Socialism,’ Dog had retorted but the superintendent had preferred not to hear.
So, he had announced challengingly that he was going to drive up to Northampton and interview the mother.
Tench had considered, smiled, and said, ‘Good thinking, Dog. You do that. One thing though. Keep a low profile. Don’t give the local plods any details. Don’t want them muddying the waters, do we? Above all, I don’t want anyone getting a sniff that the Branch is interested, not till I’m good and ready. So, mum’s the word. And watch out for Indians north of Watford!’
Tench’s agreement as much as anything had convinced him he was probably wasting his time.
It was his first visit to Northampton, so when the traffic on the approach road slowed to a crawl he had no local knowledge to make a diversion. The problem turned out to be a roundabout next to which some planning genius had built a superstore whose car park spilled a steady stream of late shoppers into the carriageway. On the other side, bright and compelling as a wise man’s star, beamed a sign: CLAREVIEW MOTEL: Accommodation, Fuel, Cafeteria, Toilets. Feeling the need for a pee, a coffee and a map of the city, preferably in that order, Dog turned in.
Five minutes later, all his needs satisfied, he sat in the cafeteria smoking a roll-up and studied the map. The Maguire house was in a suburb quite close on the ring road, but it wouldn’t do to head straight there. Courtesy, and also common sense, required a visit to the local nick to reveal his presence and check out any local knowledge.
He got lost twice in a one-way system before he made it to Police HQ. There he was passed on to a grizzled chief inspector called Denver. Dog outlined the situation, following Tench’s instruction to keep things as low key as possible. Without actually lying, he gave the impression that Noll Maguire had probably just wandered off and his mother had gone looking for him and possibly one or both of them might fetch up at the grandmother’s house. He anticipated some probing questions. Instead Denver’s face lit up when he heard the name Maguire.
‘Janey Maguire! She was at school with my girl. Lovely lass, and by God she could move! I mean move. National standard, international maybe. Sprints, hurdles, cross-country, they were all one to her. If you could run it or jump it, she was your girl. And when it came to throwing things, she was no slouch either. Modern pentathlon, that’s what she should have done. But you need encouragement at home to buckle down to that kind of training.’
‘Which she didn’t get?’
‘No, more’s the pity. From all accounts she didn’t get much encouragement to do anything. Mrs Maguire sounds like a real throwback. Type who thinks decent Catholic girls don’t need educating for anything but keeping house, getting married and having babies. As for athletics, that was carnal display! Their parish priest backed her up. He was out of the Middle Ages. You a Catholic, Inspector? Name like Cicero …’
‘Was,’ said Dog.
‘Then you’ll know what I mean. Fortunately, her uncle, old Mrs Maguire’s brother, was a priest too, taught at the Priory College, Catholic boarding school, just a few miles out of town. All boys, naturally. But at least he was able to put his vote in for education so Janey didn’t leave school after “O” levels like her mam wanted but went on into the sixth form. She still did her athletics, but never lived up to her promise. Some said she lost her edge because she filled up too much up top. Me, I don’t think so. There’s been plenty of world beaters with big knockers. I think she was just so worried about not making the grade that she spent more time on her books than she needed to. It was her escape route, see? Get away to college, then get a qualification that’d get her a job anywhere.’
‘You’re very well informed,’ commented Dog.
‘My daughter. She was a little bit younger and she thought the sun shone out of Janey’s bum! I used to get Janey Maguire night and day and, of course, she was always round at our house.’
Another line of enquiry? Dog said, ‘Is your daughter living locally?’
‘No.’ The man’s face saddened. ‘Melbourne. We’re going out to see them when I retire next year. But she’d not be able to help even if she still lived here. They kept in touch through college, but after that they lost touch. More Janey than my girl. She had a bit of bother in her first job. After that, she seemed to cut contact with all her old mates.’
‘She never came back here?’
‘Not that I know of,’ said Denver. ‘My girl heard she’d married some Yank and settled down over there. Then she got married herself and next thing, Australia. They say the world’s getting smaller. It doesn’t feel like it! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do. I hope you get things sorted out, Inspector. She was a nice kid and I’d hate to think of any harm coming to her. You’ll keep me posted? I like to know exactly what’s going on on my patch, preferably before it happens.’
There was a warning in his voice. He’s no fool, thought Dog. He’s wondering why the hell I’ve come up here personally when a phone call would have done. Sod Toby Tench! It’s my case and Denver ought to be told that there’s a possibility his daughter’s nice school friend’s on the run from a charge of child-killing.
He was on the point of saying something when the phone rang. Denver picked it up, listened, covered the mouthpiece and said, ‘Sorry, this’ll take a bit of time. Are we done?’
‘Yes,’ said Dog. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
And left, feeling both relieved and guilty.
He found Mrs Maguire’s house without any difficulty. It was a thirties semi, narrow and single fronted. There was an old Ford Popular parked in front of it. He drew up behind, locked his car and went through a wrought-iron gate and up a scrubbed concrete path alongside a tiny garden so compulsively neat, it seemed to owe more to needlework than horticulture. The doorstep was an unblemished red, the letter box glinted like a Guard’s cuirass, and Dog found himself touching the bell push gingerly for fear of leaving a print.
The small middle-aged woman who opened the door looked a fit custodian for such a temple of neatness. Her hair was tightly permed like a chain-mail skull cap, her lips were like a crack in the pavement, and her eyes regarded him with fierce suspicion through spectacles polished to a lensless clarity. She bore such little resemblance to her daughter that Dog’s ‘Mrs Maguire?’ was tentative to the point of apology.
‘And who wants to know?’
The brogue was there, strong and unmistakable as poteen.
He produced his warrant card, certain that proof was going to be needed before he got over this step.
She examined it and said, ‘Cicero. That’s not an English name.’
‘It is now. I mean, I’m English and it’s my name.’
She nodded sharply as if the logic satisfied her sense of tidiness, and motioned him to enter. He followed her into a chill and cheerless sitting room where a bearded man in a dark suit and clerical collar sat on the edge of an unyielding armchair, a cup of tea in his hand.
