‘Right!’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Let’s motor.’ He tossed her the keys, catching her eye briefly as they left the cold room. Her clear blue eyes betrayed nothing. Life still had to make its mark on her, he thought, and sighed inwardly. He didn’t consider himself one of the world’s natural philosophers, but as they left the building, he found himself musing on the way every upset will add a line here and a crease there until one gradually builds up a mask of resistance, until, in the end, no one can ever tell.
Midday, Tiptree village, nine miles west of Colchester
They’d followed Maldon Road through the softly undulating white countryside. Neither had spoken. The wind sprayed snow lightly across the road. As she fumbled for the wipers, the police airwaves crackled intermittently: a granny arguing with Woolworths staff over stealing a ballpoint; truanting school kids vandalizing a phone box; a dog off the lead terrorizing a pregnant mother in Castle Park: that was Gabriel’s world – the general public and its daily grind.
‘Turn here,’ Lowry, said, the first words he’d spoken since they’d left Queen Street. ‘What did you make of Felix Cowley?’
They were now cruising slowly through the village centre. The Tiptree police had confirmed with Philpott’s mother that he was in the village; the old woman seemed relieved to hear from them, and had said quietly he would nip to the bookie’s at noon.
‘He’s very confused.’
‘He’s not the only one.’
‘I didn’t get anywhere, I’m afraid. He needed his medicine.’
‘What sort of medicine is it?’
‘Lithium: some kind of mood stabilizer. I had the doctor see him. He’ll be transferred to Severalls later today.’
‘Good.’
‘He asked for pencils, too. Drawing calms him down.’
‘Well done.’
‘What for?’
‘You said you’d not got anywhere – but you found out he likes to draw. That wasn’t in his file.’ Suddenly, Lowry jerked forward. ‘There he is, coming out of the newsagent’s with the terrier. Pull over.’
Gabriel did as instructed, and parked in front of a café. She found the inspector’s Saab heavy and uncomfortable to drive. She didn’t get the thrill she’d expected from the pursuit of hardened villains – if that’s the kind they were now after. She hastily grappled with the seat belt; Lowry, not wearing one, was out already.
‘He’s oblivious to all the world,’ Lowry said over the roof of the Saab. The suspect was walking towards them, the dog in a little coat trotting next to him.
‘But I’m in uniform?’
‘So? If he’s going to run, he’ll run.’
Gabriel was bemused, but then there was a lot she didn’t understand at the moment. Take this morning, for instance: Chief Superintendent Sparks had made an incredibly patronizing speech – it was his way, of course – lined with platitudes concerning a woman’s place in the police force. And then there was Detective Constable’s Kenton’s inexplicable hostility.
‘He hasn’t seen us. Look at that shiner – Sparks was right,’ Lowry remarked as the suspect, a man in his early forties with short brown hair and large sideburns, chatted to an old man with a walking stick.
‘Right about what?’
‘Licking his wounds at his mum’s place – a self-respecting villain wouldn’t want to be seen sporting a black eye like that on his own patch; he’ll be sensitive about his reputation.’
It sounded like machismo nonsense, so she had no further comment. Philpott and his dog stopped before them at a pelican crossing and strolled across towards a park still white with yesterday’s snow. Although she would’ve loved to be somewhere else, Gabriel decided to act positive and said brightly, ‘Tiptree: I’ve never been here before – it seems a quaint village.’
Lowry snorted. ‘Gypsies and jam is all you’ll find here. Oi! Jamie!’
Gabriel jumped at his sudden bellow. The man, who was wearing a green bomber jacket, stopped in his tracks just inside the park and turned round. His face registered an agitated ‘What now?’ look. The terrier, sensing his master’s displeasure, started yapping angrily.
‘I hate dogs, don’t you?’ Lowry asked.
‘My mother has a poodle . . .’ But he hadn’t waited for a response and was crunching ahead across the white ground. Gabriel followed, catching up with Lowry as he entered the park and strode towards Philpott. A group of young boys stopped passing a football and regarded them with curiosity.
‘Jamie, old son, what a sorry state you are.’ Lowry tutted. Philpott was about the same height as Lowry but of slighter build: course and sinewy, she imagined, under the football scarf and bomber jacket. ‘Whatever happened?’
‘Fucking squaddie took a swing at me, as if you didn’t know,’ grumbled Philpott. The dog continued to yap.
‘Can you quieten your dog, please?’ Gabriel asked, feeling the early twinges of a migraine.
Philpott took her in for the first time. ‘Bleedin’ hell, where’d you come from? An improvement on the usual trunks Lowry gets landed with. Shut it, Jasper.’
‘Why didn’t you leave a note of your whereabouts when checking out of the hospital?’ Lowry asked.
‘Why should I?’
‘We had questions pertaining to your assault,’ Gabriel chipped in bluntly.
‘Why question me? It should be that meathead you hassle. I’m the one who got lumped.’
‘We need a witness statement,’ she replied. Lowry stood by, quietly regarding the dog.
Philpott sniffed, unpleasantly drawing up phlegm. ‘All right, what do you want to know?’
‘Did you know your attacker?’
‘By sight. Big fella.’
‘Why did he hit you?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’
‘He says you spilt his drink,’ she said. Philpott snorted in derision.
The man was repellent.
‘Let’s go inside for a chat,’ Lowry said quietly.
‘Inside where?’ His eyes darted this way and that, unable to focus on either DI Lowry or WPC Gabriel.
‘The car. It’s chilly out here,’ Lowry said. ‘Besides, do you really want to be seen fraternizing with us?’
Philpott regarded the boys with the football, who had yet to resume playing. Gabriel now understood why he was looking at her so disdainfully. Lowry was in plain clothes, so it was she who was drawing attention to him – her and the foul little dog.
‘What about Jasper?’
‘He’s wearing a coat, so will be fine outside. C’mon.’
They left the park. Wondering where this would lead, she looked at the crisp ground and was reminded of the bright morning a few days before, when she’d watched Lowry on the bandstand, surveying Castle Park. He’d not so much as mentioned the case to her since, and she wondered again at his silence on the road this morning.
Lowry ushered Philpott into the back of the car, taking the dog lead. He nodded for her to get in the front. She frowned; he pointed to the driver’s side. He moved round the back of the Saab, after shutting Philpott in.
‘Right,’ Lowry said, climbing in. ‘I’ll just trap Jasper’s lead in the door here, all right, Jamie?’
‘Be quick about it. I don’t want to be seen with the likes of her in the middle of the flaming village.’
‘Sure, sure.’ He slammed the door. ‘Start her up, WPC Gabriel; get the blower on.’
She did as he said and turned the heater up.
‘Right, Jamie, ol’ fruit.’ He clasped the younger man’s shoulder. ‘Were you, or were you not, at number four Beaumont Terrace on Saturday morning?’
‘What? I thought this was about that punch-up?’
‘In good time. But before we get to that – where were you at that time? Down on the Greenstead Estate trying to pick up a bit of whizz?’
>
‘I’m not ’aving this.’ Philpott tried to open the door. ‘I’ll be on the horn to Sparks if you don’t—’
‘WPC Gabriel, pull out.’ She turned round to make sure she’d heard right. Lowry was perfectly calm. Philpott was a vision of panic. ‘WPC Gabriel, if you will. Slowly, though. We want our little friend outside to keep up, at least at first.’
‘Eh?’ Philpott exclaimed in alarm. ‘You bastard, Lowry!’ Philpott rattled the door handle again, gripped by anger.
‘No use, Jamie: child-locked, I’m afraid.’
Gabriel reversed the car tentatively. Lowry surely wouldn’t kill the man’s dog, would he? Jamie Philpott clearly thought otherwise; he’d gone quiet and now sat sullenly in his seat.
‘Now, I’ll ask again: were you, or were you not, on the Greenstead Estate on Saturday?’
-46-
1 p.m., Wednesday, Queen Street HQ
‘I don’t buy that for one minute,’ Lowry muttered.
He and Kenton were in the corridor outside the interview room where Philpott was being held. Kenton had returned from Mersea empty-handed, having failed to find Nugent. To be fair, the island was small and Kenton knew no one there, and this, along with the handicap of him avoiding the governing police presence, who by rights should point him in the right direction, made his chances of locating Nugent practically nil. So, in an attempt to appear not totally useless, Kenton had tried to bamboozle Lowry with his theories about the murders. He was convinced that the deaths of Private Daley and of Stone and Boyd in Greenstead were directly related. The premise was simple: Stone had chased the soldiers across the park in connection with a drugs feud and, as retaliation, he himself had been murdered, along with Boyd. Kenton had read of similar drug-related killings in South London.
But Lowry remained unconvinced.
‘Why not?’
‘A flake pothead like Stone chasing a pair of six-foot soldiers across town? What’s the worst he’d do if he caught them – give them a blowback?’
‘What if he was armed? Stone had a gun – he pulled an armed robbery.’
‘No.’ Lowry refused to be swayed. ‘Derek Stone couldn’t run for a bus, let alone up and down Castle Park. Whoever it was those boys were scarpering from, it wasn’t some stoner who would’ve tripped on his shoelace before getting to the end of the high street. Forget that theory for now.’ Lowry peeked through the glass panel of the door at the bruised and unshaven Philpott. ‘Let’s see how this man trips up.’ He pushed the door open.
As they entered the interview room, Lowry turned to Kenton and pointedly said, ‘Pond’s story figures – very useful; we’re a step closer.’
‘What’s that you said about Pond?’ Philpott said.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lowry said, pulling up a chair, ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’
Philpott didn’t pursue it, but Lowry knew a loose line like that would play on his mind. Tony Pond was higher up the food chain than he was, and therefore more valuable to the police. Philpott watched Kenton writing something in his notebook.
‘All right, I did pick up some gear from the Greenstead Estate. What of it?’
‘Who tipped you off to it?’
‘Derek Stone.’
‘Ah, yes, Mr Stone. We’ll get to him in a minute.’
Lowry might not reckon on Philpott as a murderer but he wouldn’t put turning over a post office past him.
‘Now, let’s start from the beginning. Saturday just gone. New Year’s Day.’
Philpott sighed and reached for Lowry’s cigarettes. His eyes were glassy, and he had a tendency to flinch, almost a tic; Lowry’d not noticed it before. ‘Okay, okay. Saturday morning, I bowl along to Beaumont Terrace.’
‘With Derek Stone?’ Kenton asked sharply.
‘Nah,’ Philpott said, not looking at Kenton. ‘I’d not seen Del since the night before.’
‘Was he there already?’
‘Yeah – if you let me talk, I’ll bleedin’ tell you, won’t I?’ He dragged on the cigarette contemptuously. ‘I got there, and Del and the couriers – the guys who brought it in – were all there.’
‘Just them?’
‘Yeah – three of them, sitting round the kitchen table, bored. The two lads were anxious, waiting to be paid off. There’d obviously been a fuck-up of some kind.’
Lowry slid photos of Cowley and Boyd towards Philpott, who grunted in recognition.
‘So how long did you stay?’ Kenton asked.
‘I told you already, all I wanted was my gear, for personal use . . . but they wouldn’t let me have it first off. I could tell they were on the verge of taking a dip themselves, so I twisted their arm, like, an’ we had a line. They loosened up a bit after that, so I chucked them a twenty and took my lot.’
‘What happened next?’
‘Things began to liven up. We all went out to the Rose and Crown for a quick pint, and then I left ’em to it and shot off up the town centre.’
‘And?’
‘That’s it. Enda story. They were off their nuts, and I was pretty perky myself.’ The man’s eyes were darting everywhere; Lowry detected anxiety. ‘Can I go now?’ Lowry wondered if he was on a comedown.
‘Going back to the house: when you first entered, how was the mood?’
‘“How was the mood?” What sort of gay question’s that?’
Lowry stepped up to the table. ‘I mean, Jamie, how were they? On edge? You knew the two men were the couriers, and they were still there. Did that not strike you as odd?’
‘How the fuck do I know what they were doing there?’ The swelling round Philpott’s cheek squeezed his eye shut when he raised his voice.
‘Have a guess?’
‘Waiting for Father Christmas? The Easter Bunny?’ He eased his chair back from the table. ‘But I’d imagine they might be waiting to get paid so they could bugger off? Wouldn’t you?’
Lowry had had enough. Why on earth Sparks had let this eel continue to slip and slide around them and the town all this time was beyond him. But Philpott’s time was coming to an end. He just wanted to circle him once more before springing the post-office robbery on him.
‘Did you try to sell speed to Quinn?’ Kenton asked.
‘ . . . No.’
‘But you went in the pub, with the intent of selling?’
‘Eh? Why d’you say that? I went round there to get my own wrap, and that was all.’
‘How do we know what you bought? You might be dealing,’ Lowry said.
‘Leave it out.’ He snatched up the Player’s irritably. ‘Besides, I still got it on me.’
Philpott chucked the cellophane bundle on the table. Lowry picked up the wrap and tossed it in his hand. There was more than a few nights’ personal use here, by his reckoning. What was he doing, going for a stroll in the park with a dog, with this on him? He had to be on it still; his mind was still under the influence of the drug; he wasn’t thinking straight. And, given however much he had in his system now was making him as irritating as hell, it didn’t take a genius to figure how insufferable he’d have been on Saturday night when he was completely wired. And it wouldn’t take much to provoke someone into laying the little bastard out, let alone a lunk like Quinn . . .
‘Why bunk out of the hospital?’ he asked finally.
‘Why—?’
‘Someone out to get you?’ Kenton reasoned.
‘Fuck off, Gaylord.’
Offended, Kenton looked at Lowry, willing him to react. Lowry sighed. ‘As you know, two people were murdered in Beaumont Terrace on Sunday night, in the very house you’d visited. So –’ he leaned forward and, with a clenched fist, jabbed a prominent index knuckle into Philpott’s worn forehead; the villain jolted back in surprise and pain – ‘can’t you get it into that thick head of yours that doing a bunk like that would make you the prime suspe
ct?’
‘Wha—?!’ the man bleated, rubbing his head in surprise and shock. ‘I was – shit, that hurt – I was round my old dear’s! If I was a murderer on the run, I reckon I’d’ve gone a bit further than bleedin’ Tiptree! Where’s Sparks? He’d not let you shove me about like this—’
‘I think Sparks would be more than happy to shove you about himself, given you robbed the Mersea post office on 27 December with Derek Stone.’
‘Wha—? How?’ He appeared genuinely startled.
‘Oh, come on, Jamie.’
Lowry was about to tap him on the forehead again but was distracted by an urgent-sounding rap on the door.
‘Right.’ He turned to Kenton. ‘Get a blow-by-blow account of where he was the week between Christmas and New Year.’ There was something about this creep that made Lowry uneasy, but he was too wound up to think clearly now, so he just added, ‘And Jamie, think about it – the sentence for armed robbery versus the sentence for armed robbery and murder.’
He moved across the room and edged the door open to greet an excited PC.
‘A car, sir; we’ve found a car!’
-47-
1.45 p.m., Wednesday, Hythe Hill, New Town, near Artillery Street
A blue Ford Cortina sat amidst snow-crowned builders’ debris on a patch of wasteland across from Artillery Street. A skimpily dressed girl of seventeen or so with peroxide-blond hair stood next to the car with a WPC. An icy wind flapped a torn bag of cement; you couldn’t tell whether the area was up for development or had been abandoned for good.
‘This is Kerry, sir; works in the salon. Remembers the man in the flat above asking where he could park a car.’
‘The man who lived there didn’t know where to park his car?’
‘He didn’t own the car, sir; it was for his friend.’
Lowry looked at the girl, who was shivering. She managed a smile. ‘When was this?’
‘Between Christmas and New Year.’