‘No, he didn’t eat them both,’ Skinner told me, earnestly. ‘I had one of them. He just told his firm that he had, for the money.’ Now he was taking the piss.

  Sparky said: ‘How did you learn of the doctor’s death?’

  ‘Jim and Mary have a phone. The wife – she’s not really the wife – rang me, Christmas Day. Said it’d been on Radio Leeds.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘What am I going to do for my scripts? That’s what drugs do to you.’

  ‘Who did you get your drugs off before the methadone?’ I asked.

  A look of panic flashed across his face. ‘I can’t tell you that. I’d be a dead man.’

  ‘OK. If you didn’t kill the doctor, who did? Were you in with anyone heavy? Had you told your supplier about him? Was he losing a good customer because of the doc?’

  ‘No. I didn’t tell a soul, except the wife. And I bought my H casual, like. Nothing regular. Half a gram, when I had the money. That’s all. It’s all the other stuff they put in it that fucks you up.’

  ‘Are you all right for today?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, but I haven’t got it with me.’

  ‘And tomorrow?’

  ‘I need to fix something for tomorrow.’

  ‘Want our doctor to see you?’

  He hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Maybe now’s the time to break with it.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll leave it at that, for now.’

  He was taken to one of the cells. Judging by his trousers, the duty solicitor went for a round of golf and Sparky and I trudged up the stairs to the CID office.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Sparky asked. Someone always asks it. I knew what I reckoned, but I wasn’t admitting it, yet.

  ‘Check it all out,’ I said. ‘Let’s see what they turn up at the squat – a gun would be nice. Talk to the brother-in-law, get the receipts. Then let’s have a look at Jim and Mary in Wandsworth and the doctor down there. Have a word with traffic. Try to arrange for someone local to get a receipt for a breakfast from the cafe-near-the-wall-by-the-silverstream-under-the-trees-by-the-flyover. Could be worse. It could have been in Welsh.’

  Maggie was in the office. ‘It’s on your desk,’ she said. ‘That was quick.’

  ‘We don’t mess about. When are we going to have a word with him?’

  ‘Darryl?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Not yet,’ I told her. ‘I want to concentrate on the doctor job, if you don’t mind. Makinson will be back on the second, and I’ve a feeling he’s not going to be pleased with what I have to say. Maybe we’ll go for Mr Buxton when the debris has fallen to the ground, eh?’

  ‘What about tomorrow? We could get him then.’ ‘Tomorrow, Maggie, is a bank holiday. I suggest we all have the day off. What’s good enough for Mr Makinson is good enough for the rest of us.’

  ‘Blimey!’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing.’

  ‘Well just keep your fingers crossed that our Darryl doesn’t strike again.’

  ‘I never thought of that. Do you think he might?’

  ‘I doubt it. Hopefully this was a one-off.’ I wondered if I was making a mistake. Maybe we should put the scarers on him as soon as possible. ‘Have you an Almanac handy?’ I asked. ‘There is one avenue we can try.’

  Maggie fetched it from where it hung on a piece of string from a nail in the notice board. I thumbed through it after studying the map and dialled a number.

  ‘Pendle Police Headquarters,’ a voice sang in my ear. ‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘Could you please put me through to DI Drago at Burnley Padiham Road CID.’

  ‘Putting you through.’

  After the usual beeping and clicking a voice said: Tadiham Road CID. DI Smith speaking.’

  I said: ‘Hello. This is DI Charlie Priest at Heckley CID. Is DI Drago available, please?’

  ‘Drago? DI Drago? Sorry, Mr Priest, I’ve never heard of him.’

  I looked at the date on the front of the Almanac. It was eight years old. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘He must have moved on. Doesn’t time fly? Peter Drago owed me a favour and I was calling it in. We were at the Academy together a long time ago, and one night I saved him from a six-foot bald-headed nympho-maniac. I wonder if you can help me. How’s your local knowledge?’

  ‘Not brilliant, I’m afraid. Only been here three weeks. I was at Chester before that.’

  ‘Right. Well, I’d be very grateful if you could make a few enquiries on my behalf with your intelligence officer or any other local men.’

  ‘I’ll see what we can do, Mr Priest.’

  ‘Good. Thanks. We are about to have a talk with a character called Darryl Buxton, about an alleged rape on Christmas Eve. He has no form, but we think he may have come from Burnley. If I give you his description do you think you could see if he’s known to anyone, please?’

  ‘You mean, informally?’

  I winked at Maggie. ‘Yes, informally. Just between ourselves.’

  He told me that I wouldn’t be able to use it and I said yes, I was aware that I wouldn’t be able to use it, and he eventually said he would, so I gave him the description. Computers are good for storing information, but there are some things you just daren’t put on them. I wanted to know if there was anything like that for Darryl Buxton. All’s fair in love and law.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Maggie asked as I replaced the handset. ‘What’s Burnley got to do with it?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I replied, settling back in the chair. ‘It all started in the First World War.’

  The East Lancashire Regiment was in the thick of it. In 1914 they recruited locally: men from one town, or one street, enlisting together to form what were known as Pals Battalions. Brother trained and fought side by side with brother, father with son. They escaped the drudgery of mill or coalmine to take the King’s shilling and fight to make the world a better place. They yelled blood-curdling war-cries as they stabbed bags of straw with their bayonets and imagined they were killing Germans. The only difference, they were assured, was that the real thing would be running away from them. Nobody told them that their enemy was probably a blond-haired Adonis who’d grown up in the fields and mountains of Bavaria, not stooped over loom or shovel breathing foul air for twelve hours per day.

  Nobody told them about machine guns.

  Nobody told them about the Military Police who followed behind and shot anyone who turned to run, even though their comrades were falling around them like over-ripe plums in the first autumn gale.

  And nobody ever mentioned the firing squads that were waiting for the frightened or the feeble or the ones who simply saw more suffering than anyone could bear.

  When it was over, when the politicians saw the opportunity to save face, when Satan himself was sickened by the carnage, those that remained limped their way back towards the Channel, towards home. They left behind their friends, their sight, their youth and, some of them, their sanity.

  For the East Lancs, a ragged remnant of their former selves, luck changed. They regrouped and billeted at Fecamp, in Normandy. Centuries before, the Benedictine monks who lived there had devised the medicinal brew of grape and herbs that now bears their name. It was offered to the soldiers of the East Lancs to soothe the pain, and, being fifty per cent proof, it worked. They asked for more. To men who were still young enough to remember every pint of weak beer they’d had, it had a kick like a field gun.

  They brought the pestle-shaped bottles home with them, to stand on the sideboard alongside the shell cases, the uniformed photograph and the framed message from the King. And they brought a taste for the contents with them, too.

  Like the gene for brown eyes, or cystic fibrosis, or the belief in God, it passed down the generations. Eighty years later a handful of pubs and clubs around Burnley still do a thriving trade in Benedictine, serving it to the great-greatgrandchildren of that ragtaggle army that left its dreams ‘hanging on the old barbed wire’.

  Sparky had joined us. ‘You know some stuff,’ he said, when I’d finished.

  ‘It doesn’t win quizzes,’ I admitted.

  ‘So you reckon he comes from Burnley,’ Maggie said. ‘I’d bet on it.’

  She was picking at her fingernails, absent-mindedly removing imaginary dirt from under them with her thumbnail, a faraway expression on her face. ‘It’d be nice if they could come up with something,’ she said. She wanted Darryl behind bars.

  ‘Day after tomorrow,’ I told her. ‘We’ll have a word with him then. Put it in your new diary.’

  Sparky was pulling his coat on. ‘I’ll get down to the squat, Boss,’ he said. ‘See if they need any help.’

  ‘OK. I’ll probably be here if you want me, but try not to.’ I didn’t envy them, having to cope with all the residents, plus children and animals. It’d be a pantomime.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘Not sure. Haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘In that case, come round. See the New Year in with us.’

  ‘Aren’t you going out?’

  ‘No. Sophie’s going to a party, so Daniel would be left on his own. We’ll stay in with him.’

  ‘Right, thanks. I’ll come round late on, if that’s OK?’

  ‘See you then. I might have to tear myself away to fetch Sophie. The joys of fatherhood,’ he added, making a face.

  A copy of The Sun was lying on Jeff Caton’s desk, with the headline ‘5,000 New Cops’. I picked it up and read the story.

  It didn’t take long. The streets were about to be reclaimed for the people. The PM’s new initiative would meet the muggers and vandals and drug pushers head-on, make them realise that they had no future in the New Society. Suddenly, we had Society again. They made it sound as if our towns and villages would be flooded with policemen. You’d be able to walk your dog at two in the morning, safe in the knowledge that a friendly bobby would be standing on every street corner.

  I pulled out my calculator and typed 5,000 into it. Divide by forty-three forces, except that the Met would get the lion’s share, then by the seventeen divisions in East Pennine and the number of stations in Heckley. We cover twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week, but each officer only works five eight-hour shifts. I tapped the appropriate keys. Then there’s holidays, training courses and sick leave. I hit the equals button and watched as minute electrical forces shuffled molecules into new locations, spelling out a number. It said that at any given time the citizens of Heckley would have the benefit of an extra 0.49 of a policeman on duty. Allowing for meal breaks, paperwork and time in court, it worked out as the equivalent of a rooky wolf cub. Halle-flipping-lujah.

  I did a report for Makinson and caught up with the burglaries. Lunch was a mug of tea. The doctor in Wandsworth was on his rounds, I was told, but I’d catch him about ten to four. Sparky rang to say that they’d found nothing of interest at the squat and Nigel told me that Skinner’s brother-in-law had been traced. He’d be having a word with him shortly.

  It had never looked good, and then it all fell to pieces. Nigel came in with the till receipts and they sounded just like the one a Traffic officer from Cambridgeshire described to me. The doctor in Wandsworth verified that he had been contacted by Dr Jordan, and Skinner had collected his prescriptions from him like a good little boy. Jim and Mary were stalwarts of the local church and supported Skinner’s story, and finally, we didn’t have a weapon.

  ‘Let him go,’ Superintendent Wood said.

  ‘Let him go,’ Chief Superintendent Isles concurred.

  ‘You can go,’ I told Skinner. The only bright spot was the thought of the look on Makinson’s sunburnt face when he learnt the news, and I wondered how I could wangle being there at the time.

  I hung around in the office until I knew the Bamboo Curtain would be open and had my favourite, duck in plum sauce, for tea, washed down with a pint of lager. There was no reason why I shouldn’t have a little celebration of my own. The place was almost empty, so early in the evening, and the proprietor came and shared a pot of Chinese tea with me, on the house. Later, it would be rowdy with drunks, but the staff would serve them with patience and courtesy, their contempt suppressed by ten thousand years of oppression.

  There were no messages on my ansaphone but the postman had made a delivery. The various financial organisations that knew my address were suggesting that now was the time to reorganise my lifestyle and the house insurance was due. I binned most of it and had a shower.

  I had no clean shirts. Well, no decent ones. I don’t wear designer clothes and automatically reject anything with the label on the outside. If they want me to advertise their wares they should pay me, or at least bring their prices down. All jeans are made from the same material on the same machines to the same measurements. Only the labels vary, with perhaps an odd row of decorative stitching. I buy mine in the market at half price. I pulled on a pair that had that washed-once look, when the colour is at its brightest.

  There is one exception to my aversion to style. Wrangler do a shirt that has a row of mother-of-pearl press-studs down the front instead of buttons, and the first time I saw one I thought that one day all shirts would be like that. Harold Wilson was at Number Ten at the time, but Scott McKenzie was at number one. I found a faded example in the recesses of the wardrobe and put it on. I was only going to Sparky’s; I’d do.

  Once upon a time I thought I was trendy, at art school, when I was competing with the other young blokes, like a stag at rutting time. I had an Afghan coat. I gave it to the Oxfam shop, and a couple of years ago I’m sure I saw it on telly, when Kabul fell. What goes around comes around.

  I made a mug of tea and relaxed for a while to a Dire Straits CD, hoping Annabelle would call me. It was ten o’clock when the phone rang, as I was opening my front door, leather jacket half on, half off.

  ‘Priest!’ I snapped into it, with faked authority.

  ‘Hi, Charlie. Pete Drago. How are you?’

  Hiya, Dragon,’ I replied. ‘This is a pleasant surprise. I’m fine, how are you?’

  ‘I’m OK, thanks. Counting the days, of course, like you, I suppose.’

  ‘Time flies, don’t remind me.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem like fifteen years since I rescued you from that big nympho when we were at the Academy.’

  ‘Your memory’s playing tricks. It was me who rescued you.’

  ‘No it wasn’t. I was knocking her off for the rest of the course.’

  ‘So were most of the others.’

  ‘Then everyone was happy. I wonder what happened to her?’

  ‘I married her. So where are you, these days?’

  ‘Ha ha! Good one. I’m at Penrith, back in uniform.’

  ‘Penrith? What took you there?’

  ‘It was either move up here and go back into uniform or have my buttons cut off in front of the massed troops of the division. It’s not too bad.’

  ‘I get the message. It sounds as if you haven’t changed much.’

  ‘It was a long time ago. Listen, I rang Padiham Road for a chat with a couple of old pals and they said you’d been after me.’

  ‘That’s right. We have a suspected rapist called Darryl Buxton who may have originated in Burnley. There’s nothing on the PNC for him, so I was hoping for some local knowledge.’

  ‘That’s what I was told. When I heard the name the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, except that it’s not quite right. The bloke I’m thinking of is called Darryl Burton.’

  ‘Burton?’ I repeated. ‘No, this is definitely Buxton. What did your man do?’

  ‘He raped a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, eight years ago. Invited two of them to his flat one bank holiday Monday and plied them with cheap wine. One of them passed out and he raped the other. He pleaded not guilty and just before the trial the girl’s parents withdrew the charges. It had been made plain to them that he intended destroying her credibility in court. I think she knew what it was all about.’

  ‘It sounds like our man. What does he look like?’

  The description could have been read from Maggie’s report: ‘Yuppy meets football hooligan’ was his final assessment.

  ‘It’s him,’ I said. ‘He’s moved away from Burnley and changed his name.’

  ‘If it is the same bloke he’s a nasty piece of work. He was only about twenty, but he worked as a heavy – a repo man – for a firm of bailiffs, or something.’

  ‘This one works for an estate agency called Homes 4U. He’s a branch manager.’

  ‘That’s them! Homes 4U. Estate agency is putting it a bit high, I’d say. They’re not above calling round to slow payers with the baseball bats.’

  ‘Great. You’ve been a big help, Pete. We’re bringing him in after the New Year, so it’ll be good to have some background on him.’

  ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ he said. ‘I left a few months later, but I’ve a feeling that he pulled something similar after I’d gone. The man to talk to is called Herbert Mathews. He was our collator but he retired on ill health about a year ago. I’ll give you his address. If it breathed in Burnley, Herbert knew about it.’

  We chatted for a while, agreeing that we ought to get together, knowing we wouldn’t. We’d said our farewells when a thought struck him. ‘Charlie!’ he shouted as I was replacing the phone.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I just thought of something. I believe you told Padiham Road that this rape was on Christmas Eve?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, the one I investigated was on a bank holiday Monday.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you know what tonight is? Maybe there’s a pattern.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Happy New Year.’

  ‘Thanks. And you.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We rang off and I sat thinking for a while. Sparky’s wife, Shirley, answered when I dialled their number.

  ‘Hi, Shirl,’ I said. ‘Would you be terribly disappointed if I didn’t come round? I’m falling asleep and don’t think I’ll be very good company.’

  ‘I’ll be a teeny bit disappointed,’ she replied, ‘but my teenage daughter will be devastated.’

 

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