Death’s Jest-Book

‘You wha’?’

‘You may not have noticed, lad, but the streets of our city are pretty well jammed with security vans at the busy times of day.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s one of Praesidium’s.’

This was better. Praesidium was a newish Mid-Yorkshire security company which by aggressive marketing was making its presence felt in a growth industry.

Wield close-questioned Lee about the cargo, time and location, but the boy just shrugged, and his only response to enquiries about the source of his information was it was guaranteed good, this with a double dose of that knowing look.

‘OK, Lee,’ said Wield. ‘It’s not much to go on, but I’ll mention it to my boss. He’s a payment-by-results man, by the way.’

‘Payment? What payment?’ said the youth angrily.

‘You’ll be wanting something for your trouble, won’t you?’

‘It was no trouble, just a favour, for what you did for me last night. Or should I have offered you money for that? Or summat else maybe?’

The implication was clear, but the indignation seemed genuine.

Wield said, ‘Sorry, lad. Picked you up wrong. My line of work, you think … well, you know, you don’t often get owt for nowt. Sorry.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s all right,’ said Lee.

‘Good. OK. Listen, how can I get hold of you?’

‘Why should you want to get hold of me?’

‘Just in case anything comes up. About the … heist.’

Lee thought a moment then said, ‘I’ll be in touch if there’s owt, don’t worry.’

Wield said, ‘Sure, that’s fine,’ not doubting he could get a line on the young man whenever he wanted. ‘Got to go now. Cheers. You take care of yourself.’

This time he didn’t look into the cafe as he walked by the window, not wanting to risk another glimpse of vulnerability. For the moment all that mattered was this tip. It was too vague to be of much use as it stood. He could imagine what Dalziel would tell him to do, so he might as well do the do-able part before he got told.

Back on his bike, he headed for the estate that housed Praesidium Security.

Praesidium’s boss, Morris Berry, a fleshy man with sweaty palms, was unimpressed. He called up the job sheets for Friday on his computer and after a quick examination opined that, if the tip were true, they must be dealing with a singularly unambitious gang of heisters as the only job worth the risk of a hit was the rural wages round. This delivered wage packets to various small businesses across the county. OK, with Christmas bonuses included, the initial amount carried was larger than usual, but it still only amounted to thousands rather than hundreds of thousands, and of course with each delivery, it got less.

Wield checked for himself and had to agree with the conclusion. At least it narrowed down the likely time of the hit as the gang must know that the longer they waited, the less they were going to get. Berry laughed and asked what made him think crooks were that clever. This lot must be really thick to contemplate attacking one of his state-of-the-art vans with the latest tracker devices installed so he knew their exact location all the time.

He demonstrated this with a computerized map of Yorkshire which showed van-shaped icons flashing away at various locations. Then he zoomed in on one of them.

‘There we are, Van 3 on the A1079 approaching The Fox and Hen. If the bastard stops there, he’s fired!’

The bastard, happily for him, kept going. Wield, impressed enough to have even more doubts about Lee’s tip, glanced at his watch. Jesus, it was two o’clock. Time for a pint and pie in what should by now be the CID-free zone of the Black Bull.

Peter Pascoe felt nervous. Despite all his assurances first to Ellie then to the Fat Man that the Linford case was well under control, he still had misgivings. At the heart of them stood Marcus Belchamber, advocate solicitor, of what was generally regarded as Yorkshire’s premier law firm, Chichevache, Bycorne and Belchamber.

It was universally acknowledged that if you wanted to sue your loving gran for feeding you toffees at five to the detriment of your pancreas at thirty, or if you wanted rid of your spouse but not your spouse’s assets, you retained Zoë Chichevache. If you wanted to draw up a commercial contract which would leave you keeping your fortune when all about you were losing theirs and blaming it on you, you retained Billy Bycorne. But if you simply wanted to stay out of jail, you sent for Marcus Belchamber.

He was of course an ornament of Yorkshire society, exuding reliability and respectability. His standing as a minor man of learning, particularly in the field of Roman Britain, was unassailable. Even his one approach to flashness was an unobtrusive learned jest in that he drove a Lexus bearing the numberplate JUS 10, which, if you took the digit 1 as letter I could be translated as Behold the Law!

Dalziel had a dream. ‘One day the bastard ’ull overreach himself and I’ll have his bollocks for breakfast.’

But, in the private opinion of the Fat Man’s colleague, such a culinary treat was unlikely ever to be on the menu. Why should one who could so easily gather the golden apples free ever risk lending his clients his arm to shake the tree?

And today Belchamber was appearing for the accused, Liam Linford.

Pascoe had been in on this case almost from the start, which was late one November night when John Longstreet, twenty-six, taxi driver, had arrived home from his honeymoon with his wife, Tracey Longstreet, nineteen. Home was a flat in Scaur Crescent on the Deepdale Estate. Because the street in front of the flats was lined with cars, Longstreet had parked opposite. As he unloaded the cases, his young wife, eager to enter her new home, had set out across the road, pausing in the middle of it to turn and ask him if their honeymoon had left him so weak he needed a hand.

As he started to reply to the effect that he’d soon show her how weak he was, a car came round the corner at such speed it threw his wife ten feet into the air and thirty feet forward so that she crashed down on the windscreen of the braking vehicle, slid along the bonnet and rolled off under the wheels. The low-slung machine trapped her beneath the chassis, dragging her along the road for two hundred yards before finally scraping itself free of what remained, and accelerating away into the night.

Pascoe first saw John Longstreet forty-five minutes later at the City Hospital. He was advised by the attendant doctor that he was in such deep shock it was pointless talking to him. Indeed, when Pascoe, ignoring the advice, took a seat next to the man the only coherent phrase he managed to get out of him was ‘black skull’ repeated over and over.

But for Pascoe it was enough. He put it together with another phrase elicited from the one extremely distant independent witness to the effect that it was a ‘yellow sporty job going a hell of a lick’, and he set off towards the substantial residence of Walter Linford.

Wally Linford was an entrepreneur who’d ostensibly made his fortune out of a travel company in the loadsa-money eighties, but in CID it was known this side of proof that his true metier was the financing of crime. Not directly, of course. Projects would be vetted, proposals assessed, terms agreed, at some distance from the man himself. And his approval would never be written, indeed often not spoken, but just made manifest in the form of a nod. If things went wrong, Wally stayed right, able to enjoy the fruits of his investments and bask in the respect and approval of his fellow citizens, to whom he appeared as a fair employer, a generous supporter of good causes, and a loving father.

This last at least was true. He had one son and heir. It was perhaps all he wanted because, contrary to the common run of things in which the new mother under pressure of all her new responsibilities shows a disinclination for sex, it was Wally who vacated the marriage bed after Liam’s birth. His wife, a quiet, rather introverted young woman, neither complained about nor commented on this state of affairs for some five years until, rather belatedly catching a whiff of the rampant feminism strutting the streets of Mid-Yorkshire in the eighties, she appeared one night in her husband’s room to petition for her rights only to find the situation already filled. By a muscular young man.

In divorces generally, judges are inclined to favour the mother in matters of custody. In cases like this, it is more than an inclination, it is almost an inevitability.

But Wally had turned to Chichevache, Bycorne and Belchamber who specialized in avoiding the inevitable. And Liam had grown up under the sole tutelage of his father.

And yet he had by no means turned out as his father might have wished him.

Loud, louche, and loutish, he made no effort to win the respect of the common citizenry, or indeed of anyone. He seemed to see it as his bounden duty to dispose of as much of his father’s wealth as he could in the pursuit of personal pleasure with no regard whatsoever for the rights and comforts of others. And his father, apparently blind to his defects, did nothing to disabuse him of this belief. His eighteenth birthday present six months earlier had been a canary yellow Lamborghini Diablo and he’d already run up nine penalty points on his licence for speeding. In fact it was suggested by some that had it not been for Wally’s standing in the community and close friendship with several members of the Bench, Liam would have been disqualified long since.

Well, that was between them and their conscience, thought Pascoe as he headed straight round to the Linford mansion. What was more interesting to him was the fact that Liam had thought to enhance the beauty of his machine by having a grinning black skull stencilled on the bonnet.

There was a car in the driveway of Linford’s house, but it was a Porsche, not a Lamborghini. Wally Linford himself answered the door, courteously invited him in. Liam was in the lounge, enjoying a drink with his friend, Duncan Robinson, known as Robbo, another young man whose parents had more money than anything else. Pascoe enquired after the Lamborghini. Oh yes, Liam replied, he had been driving it that night. He’d gone to the Trampus Club, met some friends, had a dance and a few drinks, just a few but he realized when he got up to leave that he might be over the limit, so like a good citizen he had accepted a lift home with his old mate, Robbo. Check it out, the Diablo should still be in Trampus’s car park.

Pascoe made a call. They sat and waited. The reply came. The car wasn’t there.

Shock! Horror! It must have been stolen, declared Liam.

And I’m to be Queen of the May, said Pascoe and arrested him. He tested positive both for booze and coke. Put him in the car and he was going down for a long, long time.

But this didn’t prove easy. Robbo vigorously confirmed Liam’s story, and several other people at the club recalled hearing the lift being offered and accepted before the two of them left together. The Diablo was found nearly eighty miles away, burned out, despite which Forensic managed to find enough traces of blood to make a match with the dead girl’s. So it was definitely the accident vehicle, but the distance involved gave further support to Liam’s story. No way would he have had time to drive that far, torch the car and get back home before Pascoe arrived to arrest him. CPS were shaking their heads very firmly.

Then a witness came forward, Oz Carnwath, a student at the local Poly earning some money by working at Trampus’s as an occasional barman. He’d been dumping rubbish in the big wheelie bin at the rear door when he saw Liam and his friend cross the car park, each get in his own car, then drive away separately. He’d kept his mouth shut at first, not wanting to get involved, and believing that Liam would get his come-uppance without any help from himself. But when the youth reappeared in the club, boasting that he was home and free, this stuck in Carnwath’s throat and he went to the police.

So far Robbo had stuck to his story, though not without uneasiness in face of Pascoe’s assurance that, if Liam was found guilty, the police wouldn’t rest till he joined him in jail for attempting to pervert the course of justice. But clearly he was even more scared of what Wally Linford would do if he came clean. In addition he must have been mightily reassured to see the firm of Chichevache, Bycorne and Belchamber retained for the defence.

But Pascoe suspected Wally wouldn’t put all his trust in legalities, and ordered a close watch to be kept on Carnwath till they got his evidence into the record at the committal proceedings. So far the business with the lost undertaker had been the only scare. And yet …

He saw Marcus Belchamber coming through the main entrance of the court complex and felt relieved that soon the action would commence. Then it dawned on him that Belchamber was alone. No Liam. No Wally.