The Devil's Interval (2 page)

Wednesday, November 26th

Chief Superintendent’s vehicle, 11.29am.

It was raining so hard that Superintendent Mary Clark had to raise her voice to her passenger as she drove.

‘You do understand what I’m saying, Pepper? It really is a complete co-incidence that I’m coming out with you this morning. I had no idea that it was the Robson case that you were on with today, no idea at all.’

‘Understood, ma’am.’

Pepper had been out with the Super a few times socially, and they were getting close to becoming friends. But that was outside work, this was a police corruption case, and Mike Robson really had been a mate. Still was, if it came to it. So she didn’t need to tell herself twice to be careful.

‘So who is this witness we’re seeing?’ asked Clark.

‘Wilf Lambton. Well known to us, as you’d expect. Been in and out of the nick since he was twelve or thirteen. Decent little burglar he is, actually. Neat and tidy anyway, or at least he doesn’t shit on the carpets.’

‘Christ, do they really do that?’

‘They get up to all sorts. Put it this way, if I ever got turned over the first thing I’d do is empty my knicker drawer straight into the bin.’

Clark laughed. ‘Enough said.’

‘Exactly. Right little pervs, most burglars past puberty are. But, like I say, Wilf’s always been an honest little con. Or at least he used to be, up until the last year or so. His last two convictions were an affray and an ABH, both domestics. I was a bit surprised when I saw them on the system today, actually. He never seemed the type. I didn't nick him for either of them, so I don’t know for sure, but I expect it’s down to drink or drugs, or both. It almost always is. Nothing sours a bloke’s attitude to his better half like taking too much gear, or having too little.’

‘So why has he come forward now? He doesn’t sound like a model citizen, even to me.’

‘We’ll make a detective of you yet, ma’am. That’s the question though, isn’t it? I’ve got no information to go on, except the certain knowledge that Wilf wouldn’t cross the road to piss on a bobby if he was on fire, so I’ve got to assume that he’s been put up to it. It’s the only explanation, really. One of his criminal betters obviously wants to make sure that Mike Robson goes down hard. They must know that he’s probably going to be convicted anyway, poor bastard, but Wilf’s evidence is probably just a bit of additional insurance.’

‘So how will you play it?’

‘Straight, ma’am, and not just because you’re here. This is enough of a mess already without giving Mike Robson’s brief anything to go at if and when it comes to trial. We already look corrupt, and I don’t want to add incompetent to the bloody list.’

‘Well, I’ll try not to make things worse. I’ll keep my mouth very firmly shut.’

‘Don’t worry about that ma’am. Lambton will probably pass out when he sees you. I doubt he’s ever seen a real Superintendent before.’ Pepper paused for a moment. ‘After all, ma’am, most street cops haven’t either.’

The two women ran from the car to the front door, and a thin young woman opened the door at the first knock.

‘Mrs. Lambton?’ said Pepper. ‘We’re…’

‘I’m not fucking simple. Come in, he’s waiting for you. Christ, you two couldn’t have been more obvious if you had bloody blue lights on your heads.’ Pepper didn’t bother to explain that, for once, helping Police with their enquiries would not lead to any negative consequences for Mrs. Lambton or her family, so the fact that the Super was in uniform really didn’t matter. ‘He’s in there’ she said, gesturing with her thumb.

The TV was on in the living room, but then it almost always was. It made Pepper nervous if she walked into a con’s house and it was too quiet. Like someone had just died, or was just about to.

‘Turn that off, Wilf’ she said, to the man lying on the sofa. His track suit carried sizeable branding on both the trousers and the torso. Pepper thought that might actually come in handy, if Wilf was ever cut in half, and the two parts dumped in adjacent parishes.

‘Jenny. Jenny,’ he shouted, without getting up, or turning off the TV.

Pepper reached down, grabbed the remote from the puffy black arm of the sofa, and flicked the TV off.

‘I was watching that.’

‘Don’t piss us about, Wilf’ said Pepper. ‘I’ve brought my boss, Superintendent Mary Clark, to see you too. So let’s behave, shall we?’

‘Jenny, Jenny’, he shouted again, but a good bit louder.

‘What?’

‘Make a brew would you?’

‘Make it yourself.’

‘For fuck’s sake, can’t you see I’m busy? I’ve got to give my bloody statement to these two.’

Lambton swung himself slowly into a slouching position, and patted the place next to him.

‘We’ll be fine over here, ta,’ said Pepper, turning a dining chair round for Clark to sit on, and then getting one for herself. ‘Now, are you ready to make this statement?’

‘Aye, it’s like I said. I heard that Mike Robson on the phone, and he was tipping someone off about a raid. I told you all this before. Now just give me something to sign, and I’ll do it.’

‘That’s not quite how this works, Wilf. I need to ask you some questions, and then we’ll get a formal statement written up. So let’s start with a few easy ones. When was this, as near as you can remember it? I expect one day’s very much the same as the next to you though, isn’t it, mate?’

For the next fifteen minutes Pepper asked and Lambton answered. He kept his answers short, and Mary Clark wondered if he’d been coached. He certainly didn’t say anything contradictory or obviously impossible, even when Pepper asked the same question in a different way, or picked him up on a specific detail. And his story was simple enough. Robson had been standing at the top of an alley near one of the clubs in Carlisle on a Friday night early in the previous April, and had apparently thought that he was alone. But Lambton had relieved himself further down the alley moments before, and didn’t want to be spotted by a copper. On his call Robson was answering questions about a drugs raid due to go off that same night, and Lambton was sure that he hadn’t been talking to another police officer.

Pepper knew, even as she asked the questions, that the call would indeed show on Robson’s call log, and that it would have been made to the phone used by a local villain who had long since vanished, presumed retired, and who was now far beyond the less than elastic arm of the cash-strapped law. It was a classic fit-up, simple but elegant enough, and while no jury in its right mind would believe a little bastard like Lambton over a straight cop, Robson was certainly not that. Not by a long shot. He’d just ceased to be useful, because he’d been caught, and this was how he was being paid off.

‘And you’re quite sure that all this is true, Wilf?’ said Pepper, when she’d finished her questions. ‘You do realise that we’re going to check, and if it turns out that you were somewhere else when you say you were pissing in that alley, well then….

‘Aye, I’m sure. Jenny, Jenny. Come in here, you bitch. I’m as dry as a parrot’s cage, with all this bloody talking.’

‘All this fucking grassing’ she shouted back. ‘I told you, do it your fucking self, you lazy, grassing bastard.’

Mary Clark was surprised that Lambton could move quite so fast, track suit or no. She only caught a glimpse of his expression as he passed, but it was enough to know that he was angry. She glanced across at Pepper, who rolled her eyes and smiled. ‘Love’s young dream,’ she said. And then the Lambtons argued for a minute or so, the volume increasing in line with the swear word to non-swearing ratio.

‘Should we intervene?’ asked Mary Clark, when it reached 50/50.

‘Oi, you two’ said Pepper, not getting up. ‘Shut up or I’ll come out there and sort you both out.’

The lovebirds weren’t listening, and the volume increased still further. ‘What are we now, invisible?’ said Pepper, getting up.

The first crash from the kitchen, and the first scream of pain, came before Pepper was even through the door, and Clark dashed after her, calling for back up as she did. She was ten seconds behind Pepper, and the sight of the kitchen knife in Mrs. Lambton’s hand stopped her dead. She had no idea what to do. Lambton was grappling with Pepper on the far side of the kitchen, near the back door, and she watched as Pepper broke the man’s hold, and then hit him in the face. She was still hitting him as he went down.

‘Have you killed him?’ shouted Mrs. Lambton, dropping the knife, and pointing at Clark. ‘You saw that, she’s fucking killed him. He’d done nothing. Nothing, you saw.’

The paramedics were in the house for a long time, but eventually they carried Lambton out on a back board, with his neck braced. His right eye was bruised and closing, but he was conscious, and talking to anyone who would listen.

‘Do I still get to make my statement?’ he asked Pepper, as he was carried past. ‘I want to make my statement.’

‘Don’t worry, you will. Though I doubt it’ll carry much weight now, what with you getting nicked again. I’m not sure that your employers will be too pleased about that. I can’t believe you’d kick off like that, with the police actually in the house. That must be some kind of bloody first, mate.

Mary Clark offered Pepper a lift back to the station, and she accepted, although she’d have rather hitched a ride back in one of the police vans that had turned up. Plenty of the lads still loved a decent punch up, and they’d rocked up in the hope of one.

‘So did you enjoy the excitement, ma’am?’ she asked, as Clark drove.

‘Not really, no. What did you see when you went in to the kitchen?’

‘They both had knives, ma’am. I had to step in. You must have seen the one he had? It’s been recovered, anyway.’

‘I didn’t, no. And is that how you subdue someone? He’s got a broken cheekbone, apparently.’

‘You do it any way you can, ma’am. Lives were in danger. Including yours, I dare say.’

‘You still hit him more often than you had to though, didn’t you?’

Pepper didn’t turn to look at Mary Clark. There was no need. She could just imagine the sanctimonious look on her face. ‘Says who?’ she said, and regretted her tone immediately. ‘I just did what needed to be done, ma’am.’

‘Did you? Are you sure about that?’

‘What will you say in your statement, then? Something different, like? Will I be suspended?’

‘I need to think about this, Pepper.’

‘I see, ma’am.’

‘You’re a very brave woman.’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’

‘But also a very angry one.’

Pepper took a breath, and then another. ’I wouldn’t say that, ma’am. And I don’t think that Wilf will be making a complaint, do you?’

‘That’s hardly the point though, is it?’ Mary Clark was silent for a few seconds. ‘But just so I’m clear about something else, tell me this. What Lambton told us was all utter bollocks, wasn’t it?’

‘Not a single word of truth, ma’am. Neat, though, to get someone like him to embellish what we already know to be true.’

‘So who put him up to it, do you think?’

‘Whoever Mike Robson really did call that night, I expect. Or his boss, anyway. But, despite knowing that, we’ll never break Lambton’s story. Pound to a penny he really was around that club, he maybe even saw Robson at some point, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no CCTV footage available now, absolutely nothing. So all he has to do now is stick to his story, and he’ll earn himself a few quid. Or at least he would have earned it, if he hadn’t got himself nicked like that.’

DC Henry Armstrong was glad to be on his own in the CID office. He was behind on his paperwork, and his ‘to-do’ list had been gradually getting longer by the day. It made him slightly nervous, as if he’d forgotten to do his homework and was just about to be found out. Rex Copeland never seemed especially bothered about his workload, and was out following up on an assault investigation that had been on the books for months, and which Pepper seemed to have lost interest in. ‘It’s just wanker on wanker violence, is that’ she’d said, when they’d discussed it in the team meeting. ‘They both ended up in A&E, didn’t they? So I’d call it a score draw, like.’

Armstrong was still smiling at the memory when he glanced up and saw the ACC Ops, already only a few feet from the desk. The bloke must wear silent shoes. Henry jumped up, and started to salute, just as he would have done when he was in uniform.

‘Sir’ he said.

‘Relax. Henry, isn’t it?’

Christ, how did he even know his name? Armstrong had seen ACC Carter once or twice, but only from a safe distance. And that was strictly the kind of range that would allow him to further increase it, without drawing undue attention to himself. But that was out of the question now, of course.

‘Yes, sir. DC Armstrong, sir.’

‘Sit yourself down, son. Mind if I join you for a minute?’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Quiet in here today, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir. The DI’s still off sick, and Pepper, DS Wilson, is out on enquiries.’

‘Never mind. It was you I’ve come to see.’

‘Me, sir?’ Armstrong started to wonder if he could possibly have done anything badly enough to earn himself a visit from the ACC. It would be as irregular as God bollocking a sinner personally.

‘I know your dad, did you know that?’

‘Yes, sir. He has mentioned that in the past.’

‘I was based at Keswick, back when I was a young beat bobby. Me and your dad worked on more than one drowning together, in fact. Happy days.’

‘Yes, sir. I’ll pass on your regards, shall I?’

‘You do that, Henry. But I had something I wanted to talk to you about, a crime report. It’s reference C/12794/AT.’

Armstrong typed in the details, and prayed that he’d remembered them correctly. As he skimmed the details he was far from sure that he had.

‘The theft of a motor vehicle from Stanwix, sir?’ That just couldn’t be right.

‘That’s the one, a 1975 Ford Granada in copper brown.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Armstrong scanned the page frantically. Was there a body in the boot that no-one had noticed, or something? What the hell was he missing? And then he saw it. ‘Reported by a Mr. Carter, sir.’