Mortal Taste (23 page)

He had spoken to two of them on the phone, and they had both told him the same thing. Keep quiet. Wait for things to blow over. The National Paedophile Unit can't have any real evidence about us, or they'd have moved in by now. But we'd better keep a low profile, all of us. And especially you.

It made sense. Except that they didn't know, couldn't know, quite how miserable he was feeling. How he needed someone to talk to, someone who would appreciate just how depressed he felt at present. If he stayed looking at these four walls much longer, desolation would deepen into despair, and despair into a desperation which might make him do something he would not even put into words.

At seven thirty, as the first notes of the
Coronation Street
music wailed from the television he had long since ceased to watch, Martin Sheene zipped up his anorak, pulled the hood of the garment up over his forehead and ears, put on his gloves, and went out into the night.

Somewhere deep within him, he knew that the group were not his real friends, that they would look out for themselves and throw him overboard without a second thought, if it came to saving their own skins. There were some powerful people among them; he had been surprised at the positions many of them occupied. All they really had in common with each other was a common weakness, Martin thought bleakly. A common sin, if you liked. If you looked at it the way other people did.

It was cold and blustery, without a star to be seen in the black sky in the intervals between the widely spaced street lights. It was a couple of miles to the house, but the walk would do him good; perhaps he could dissipate some of the gloom he felt in the effort of physical activity.

Martin, more determined than ever not to be recognized, pulled his head into the hood of his anorak, like a tortoise shutting out a hostile world. Then, with his gloved hands thrust as deeply as he could into the shallow pockets, he set off in a shambling walk towards the meeting.

He looked neither right nor left. In his misery, he did not see the figure which slipped from the car at the end of the street and followed at a safe distance behind him.

The paymaster whom Mark Lindsay had thought of as the man in black had a name, of course. He was David Sullivan. And after twenty-four hours in the cells, he was so thoroughly cowed that the Greenwood sixth-former who had thought him so formidable would scarcely have recognized him.

The Drugs Squad had questioned him for three hours on Monday morning and left him wrung out like a damp cloth. He had given them the names of Mark Lindsay and the other youngsters he had recruited as pushers in the schools and clubs. By convincing Sullivan that they already knew it, they had almost tricked him into betraying the name of the man immediately above him in the evil chain, Daniel Price. But he had realized just in time that they knew nothing about the chain of command above him, and kept his mouth stubbornly shut. By Monday afternoon, the Drugs Squad interrogators withdrew, seemingly satisfied that they had got everything he knew out of David Sullivan.

An hour later, a uniformed constable brought him an evening meal. He ate about half of it without appetite or enthusiasm. He glanced up as he heard the steel flap in the door slide back; an eye studied him for a moment through the peephole before the metal was slid back into place. What did they think he was going to do, top himself?

He wouldn't do that. At this moment, he preferred not to contemplate exactly what he should do. Get out of the area altogether, perhaps. That might be the safest course of action. When the drug barons knew you'd been rumbled, you were no use to them any more. Worse than that, you might even be an embarrassment to them, if they thought you knew more than you should. You might be expendable. You might be found in a ditch with a bullet through your head.

This was his state of mind when the heavy door was noisily unlocked. He pulled himself upright, sat on the edge of the unyielding bed as a tall man in plain clothes banged down a chair with its back towards him and sat down with his long legs astride it. The man's grey eyes stared steadily, unnervingly at Sullivan, who was dimly aware of the constable taking up his watchful station in the corner of the narrow cell.

When neither of the men spoke over a period of several seconds, David lost his nerve. He said, ‘You've had everything I know out of me already. I've nothing more to tell.'

John Lambert nodded. ‘Maybe. But this isn't about drugs. Not any more. I'm investigating a murder.'

David Sullivan's mind reeled. He hadn't thought the situation could get any worse. He'd vaguely expected that he would be out of here soon, doing what he could to piece together some sort of life. Yet he was too mentally exhausted to feel any great fear. He said woodenly, ‘I haven't killed anyone.'

‘Peter Logan. Headmaster at Greenwood Comprehensive. A place where you had pushers operating. A place where you were trying to develop your vile business. I'm sure you know he was shot through the head last Monday. It was a typical drugs killing, Mr Sullivan.'

David looked round the narrow, airless cell. There was no tape recorder running, as there had been earlier for the Drugs Squad interrogation. He couldn't work out what that meant. He tried to force defiance into the words as he said, ‘I didn't kill the bastard!'

Lambert studied him for a moment, not troubling to conceal his distaste. ‘Want a lawyer, do you? This might get nasty, unless you're ready to cooperate.'

David wondered what that meant. Did they still beat people up in the cells to get what they wanted from them? He looked past the lined face in front of him to the impassive features of the uniformed man by the door. He said, ‘I heard about that murder, of course I did, but I don't know who killed the poor sod.'

‘He knew about what was going on in his school, didn't he? From what we've been told, he was biding his time until he knew a little more about the chain of supply. Then he was going to destroy you and the rest of your nasty crew.'

It sounded very like the truth to David Sullivan. Logan had been on to what was going on outside the school gates as well as inside them. If the buggers above had only listened to him, if that pushy sod Price hadn't insisted on taking risks when they shouldn't have done, he wouldn't be sitting with the hard edge of this bunk numbing his thighs, talking to this calm, relentless man about murder.

Perhaps they had killed Logan, the people above him. It was the kind of thing they would do, if they decided he was getting too close to the operation. He said desperately, ‘I don't know who killed Logan.'

Lambert's grim face relaxed into a half-smile. ‘You wouldn't, would you? You're too low in the chain to be involved in decisions like that. You don't look to me like a man with the nerve to place a pistol against the back of someone's neck and blow half his head away. On the other hand, if we find you haven't given us your fullest cooperation, we could treat you as an accessory after the fact. Put you away for six or seven years. Protect the public from you for quite a time, Mr Sullivan.'

Sullivan found himself wishing he had more to give. He'd sing all right, sing like a canary all night long, if it would save his skin from a murder rap. But he didn't know anything worth having, not about this murder. All he could think of now was to give them something, anything, which would take the spotlight off him.

He swallowed hard and said, ‘I don't know any more. You need Daniel Price, if you want to find out more about this.'

It was almost nine o'clock when Lambert got into the house. ‘I'll get you something to eat,' said Christine.

‘Just a drink. I grabbed a sandwich earlier. I'm beyond anything alcoholic. Just a big mug of tea.'

It might have been twenty years and more ago, that exchange, she thought, when the young Inspector Lambert had come in late from a case. The only difference is that nowadays he could not conceal the fatigue he felt after a long day.

Christine Lambert felt herself pulled into the words of a ritual they had conducted many times before as she said, ‘You shouldn't be working as hard as this, you know. Even on a murder case.'

But this time he did not shrug her objections angrily aside, shouting that she understood nothing of his job and the way it had to be conducted, as he might have done all those years ago. He nodded a little, then protested feebly, ‘It's not all work, you know. Bert and I even managed a game of golf, yesterday.' He could scarcely believe it was so recent. In the weariness which he had allowed to descend upon him once he had reached home, the golf might have been a month ago.

‘All the same, you're pushing it. You're working like a twenty-five-year-old, and you can't get away with it any more. None of us can. You'll need to ease up a bit, even if this is your last murder.'

‘It might not be.' He regretted the words, almost before they were out. He should never have voiced the thought. It wasn't fair to Christine, and it showed a weakness in himself to be even thinking that way.

There was a pause before his wife asked in a carefully neutral voice, ‘What makes you say that, John?'

‘It doesn't matter. I should never have said it.'

‘But you have. So let's have the full story.'

‘There isn't a story, really. It's just that when I was bringing the Chief Constable up to date on this Logan case, he told me he'd made a strong plea to keep me on for another couple of years.'

‘I see.'

‘But there's probably nothing much in it. I'm sure he's written, if he says he has, but you know what these bureaucrats are. I'm not expecting them to make any exceptions, and I don't suppose Douglas Gibson is either, really.'

‘No. You're probably right. I don't think you should get your hopes up too high.'

He took a long pull at his tea. ‘No. That's just what I thought.'

He hadn't bothered to deny that he was hoping against hope to be kept on, to be useful for a little longer, she thought. She and John didn't try to deceive each other nowadays, and she supposed that was a good thing. She said quietly, ‘Play the percentages, John. Retirement's the likeliest outcome for you, so be prepared for it. Get ready to enjoy it.'

He nodded. It was so much the best advice that he could find nothing to discuss in it. He was peering down at the TV programmes in the newspaper, not wanting to look his wife straight in the eye, in case he made the discussion more earnest than it was. Looking to change the subject, he said, ‘I see there's a programme about Monet on at ten fifteen. I think I'll just watch that, to help me to wind down. I won't sleep if I go straight to bed.'

Monet was a great painter, and the programme about the latest exhibition of his work was excellent. Only a Philistine would have fallen so fast asleep in front of the television set. This one woke up with the empty room going cold and a weatherman chattering cheerfully on the screen.

When he woke next, at three o'clock in the queen-sized bed, John Lambert found his sleeping wife's arm tightened protectively around him.

C
atriona Logan was glad to be back at school. It was Tuesday morning, over a week now since her father had been killed, and she was finding that the routine of school was a help to her. The teachers had treated her with kid gloves when she had recommenced her studies at the end of the preceding week, but when she had come in after the weekend, things had seemed almost back to normal.

As she left the house at quarter past eight, she felt almost guilty to be so looking forward to school, so relieved to leave the house. Mum had been wonderful to her this last week, had understood everything, had encouraged her to take up the reins of her life as soon as she felt able to grasp them. As she fastened the gate behind her at the end of the path from the front door, she looked back and caught a glimpse of her mother's white face in the doorway. It gave her an encouraging smile before the door shut and she was released to the wider world outside.

Catriona was so delighted to be rejoining her friends after a joyless weekend that she did not notice the car parked at the end of the road, nor the man immersed in his newspaper behind the steering wheel. He did not move for two minutes after she had disappeared. Then he eased the big Rover quietly forward and turned into the driveway of the house Peter Logan's daughter had just left.

The front door opened before he reached it; the same white face which had made Catriona feel guilty greeted the visitor with an anxious smile.

For a moment, these lovers who had enjoyed every sort of intimacy did not know what to say to each other. Then Steve Fenton took Jane Logan clumsily into his arms and they held each other for a long moment without speaking, each feeling the rhythms of the other body's breathing, each striving for an emotional closeness to match the physical one they felt.

‘I can't stay long. I'll have to be at the office by nine or they'll wonder where I've got to,' he said, as they slowly relaxed their holds upon each other.

So his first words were telling her he could not stay. Would it always be like this, when they had thought that Peter's death would usher in an era of bliss? Jane shut her eyes and clung to him hard, not wishing in that moment to look up into his face and catch apprehension in his eyes. When she felt his arms drop to his side, she held on to him for an instant longer before she slowly relinquished her hold.

She could think of nothing to say but what he already knew. ‘I got rid of that bloody gun,' she said.

‘Pistol,' he corrected her automatically. The years of familiarity with weaponry died hard.

They were bickering like a long-married couple already, she thought wryly. ‘Do you want a quick coffee?'

He looked at his watch. ‘Better not, I'm running late already. But thanks for getting rid of the Smith and Wesson. It's better that it's not around, in the present circumstances.'