Beggars Banquet

The Wider Scheme

It is, of course, by no means unusual to find a solicitor in a police station.

We’re called there at all hours of the day and night, sometimes by clients, sometimes by the police themselves. There is something about those stations, something unwholesome, and it leaves its mark on you. Put me in a room full of lawyers, and I’ll tell you which ones spend a lot of time in police cells and interview rooms, and hanging around corridors and empty offices, fingers tapping impatiently against briefcases. Those laywers have a tired, drawn look. They look like morticians. They lose colour and smile less than they used to. And they look nervous and cynical at the same time, their eyes flitting over you as if you’d been accused of something.

Today, I was sitting in Detective Inspector Jack Preston’s office. He’s a friend of mine, insofar as we’ve been known to share a drink, a meal, a joke. We have met socially at parties full of other CID men and lawyers. That’s why he was doing me what he called a ‘favour’. We were having a quiet word, the door closed, about a client of mine. Jack was keen to see my client put away, but knew I could mount a reasonable defence. He wanted to do some trading. He would drop a couple of charges if my client changed his plea.

This is the way the law works. It’s the only thing that stops the courts blocking up completely. ‘Plumbing’, Jack calls it. He says we’re all plumbers’ mates, trying to keep the merde flowing.

I was putting the case for my client, not really trying too hard, just enjoying the exercise, when there was a knock at the door.

‘Yes,’ Jack called. A head appeared round the door.

‘Sorry, sir, I know you didn’t want to be disturbed.’

Jack waved the young man inside and introduced him as DC Derek Halliwell.

‘What is it, Derek?’

‘The eleven o’clock identification,’ DC Halliwell said. Jack checked his watch. It was two minutes to eleven.

‘Christ,’ he said.

I smiled. ‘Time flies.’ It was true I’d been in his office a while. We’d been chatting, that’s all. Some gossip, a few stories, a cup of coffee.

‘Do it without me,’ Jack said.

‘It’s not that, sir. We’re one short for the lineup.’

‘Have you had a look around?’

‘Nobody’s available.’

Jack thought about it. ‘Well, she knows me, I can’t do it.’ Then he had an idea. He turned to me. I widened my eyes.

‘You want me to appear in an ID parade?’

‘You’d be doing us a big favour, Roddy.’

‘Would it take long?’

He smiled. ‘You know it wouldn’t.’

I sighed, a little theatrically. ‘Only too pleased, Inspector, to help police with their inquiries.’

Jack and DC Halliwell had a laugh as I got to my feet.

Most people I know, when they think of an ID parade, they imagine the American system: two-way mirror, the witness hidden from view. But it’s not like that here. Here, the witness is face-to-face with the lineup. He or she walks along the line, then walks back along it. It can be distressing for all concerned. When Jack told me which case this present identification was concerned with, I felt pretty distressed myself.

We were standing in the anteroom.

‘You might have warned me,’ I said.

‘I’m telling you now,’ Jack said.

It was the Marshall case. Sophie Marshall had been mugged, and had died of her injuries before help could arrive. Her attacker had left her propped against a wall, and had taken only cash and jewellery. The hell of it was, I’d known Sophie Marshall. Well, I’d met her a few times, as had Jack. She’d been a court usher. We’d met her both professionally and at drinks parties. She’d been a good-looking young woman, full of life.

‘Thing is,’ Jack confided, ‘you know and I know that the MO fits Barry Cooke.’

I nodded. Barry Cooke was a young thug of the district who had mugged before and served time. He’d left the victim propped against a wall. I recalled his barrister saying in mitigation that Cooke had left the victim in that position to make him more comfortable. From the moment they found Sophie Marshall, the police suspected Cooke. They took him in for questioning, but he had a good alibi and a keen young solicitor. The evidence against him was circumstantial. It wouldn’t hold up in court.

‘But now you’ve got a witness?’ I said, interested.

Jack nodded. He seemed nervous. ‘A young woman, says she saw somebody near the scene about the time Sophie Marshall was attacked. We’ve brought Cooke in, see if she can point the finger.’ He shrugged. ‘That would just about do it.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Who is she?’

‘The witness?’ Jack shrugged again, lighting a cigarette for himself, despite the No Smoking signs on all four walls and above the door. ‘Just someone who lives near there. Actually, she lives on the floor above Marshall, but she didn’t know her. She’s not what you’d call the perfect witness.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Wait till you see her: cropped hair, ring through her nose, tattoos. She’s Ray Boyd’s girlfriend. Know him?’ I shook my head. ‘He’s got a bit of a temper on him. He was in court a couple of days ago for assault. Got off with it though.’

I nodded. ‘I think I recall the case.’

The other members of the lineup were milling around, and now the anteroom door opened and Barry Cooke was led in. I didn’t look at him. There was a quick briefing from Jack, and we were told to go into the ID room. There, we were arranged into a line. I was wearing a jacket borrowed from DC Halliwell, to make me look more ‘casual’, and I’d taken off my tie. I still looked a good deal more formal than the others in the lineup, one of whom was a police officer.

I ended up as Number Four. Barry Cooke was right next to me. He was about a foot shorter than me, with thick unkempt hair tied back into a matted ponytail. His mouth was missing a few teeth, and his face was scarred with acne. I tried to look straight ahead of me, but of course he knew who I was.

‘You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?’ he said.

‘No talking!’ one of the policemen ordered.

Then the witness was brought into the room. Jack was with her, along with Cooke’s solicitor, an upstart called Tony Barraclough. Barraclough recognised me, but didn’t let it show. He’d probably been forewarned by Jack.

The witness was about Cooke’s height and age. It struck me that they might know one another, but then this parade wouldn’t have been necessary. She was an ugly little thing, except for her eyes. Her eyes were pretty, the way she’d once been pretty all over. But she’d scraped and savaged herself, pierced herself. She wore her underclass like a uniform.

She stopped in front of Number One, then passed Two and Three and stopped in front of me. I stared straight ahead, and she moved on to Barry Cooke. But she walked right past him to Number Six. I could see hope fade from Jack’s face. His shoulders sagged. Eventually, she walked past us again. I thought this time she was going to stop at Cooke, but she was standing in front of me.

Then she reached up and tapped my shoulder.

‘That’s him,’ she said, ‘that’s the bastard.’

Jack shuffled his feet. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, I’m sure all right. Definitely him. Bastard! ’ And she slapped me hard across the face.

Two uniformed officers led her away, still screaming. Everyone looked a bit shaken up. I rubbed my cheek where it stung. Barry Cooke was watching me intently. Jack was having a quiet word with Tony Barraclough. Jack was smiling, Barraclough nodding. Then the lineup was dismissed, Cooke went off with Barraclough, and Jack came over to me.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said.

‘Do you think I should press a charge for assault?’

‘What do you reckon?’

I shrugged. ‘You say her boyfriend’s often in trouble?’

‘Not often.’

‘Maybe she’s seen me in the courts.’

‘Yes, that’s possible. Decided to have a go at you. That makes sense. Otherwise… well, I mean, you and Cooke, you’re chalk and cheese.’

‘Further apart than that, I think.’

‘Well, anyway, sorry.’ He pointed to my cheek. ‘I can see the outline of her fingers.’

I rubbed the cheek again. ‘I hope it fades before I go home.’

‘I didn’t know your wife was the jealous type.’ Jack put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Roddy, these identity parades work less often than you’d think. I’ve been picked out myself once or twice.’

‘No problem,’ I said, trying to smile.

But I was worried, all the same.

The shock wore off, and I found I had an idea.

I wanted to see if it was possible that Ray Boyd himself could have been Sophie Marshall’s attacker. I knew from Jack that Boyd had a temper, that he’d been in court for assault. It didn’t take me too long to find what I was looking for in the court records. But his previous arrests were for assaults on men, not women. They usually took place in the form of one-sided fights outside pubs. Boyd was a good fighter, by all accounts, in that he tended to lose his head and become a whirlwind, all arms and attitude, feet and ferocity. He didn’t care if you hit him back. He shrugged blows off and kept on pummelling. On the last occasion, it had taken several bystanders to drag him off his cowed opponent.

There was no mention of a girlfriend, and I didn’t want to ask Jack about her. I didn’t want him involved, not at this stage. But I had Boyd’s address, so I drove myself out there, thanking God I hadn’t yet got rid of my Ford Sierra and traded up to the Mercedes or BMW which I’d been promising myself. Where Ray Boyd lived, even a newish Sierra turned heads.

It was a mazy block of flats, eight storeys high and the colour of old dishwater. I parked my car in a bay and sat for a while, wondering what to do next. Fortunately, my wife is a birdwatcher. Her own car having been out of action last weekend, she’d borrowed mine so she and her fellow ‘twitchers’ could drive to some godforsaken spot to stare at a rare Siberian visitor. Her binoculars were still in the car. They were her second-best pair, compact in size and sheathed in green rubber. I scanned the tiers of the tower block. On the other side of the block, there were only anonymous windows, but I was parked in a kind of inner arena. This side, there were long walkways and front doors, liftshafts and stairwells. Boyd’s flat was 316, which I soon realised meant floor 3, flat 16.

Scanning what third-floor doors I could see, I eventually picked out flat 16. It looked no better or worse than its neighbours. I put the binoculars away and sat there, keeping an eye on it, pretending to read a newspaper. Even the paper, I realised, was wrong for this part of town. Not many broadsheets around here.

‘You make a lousy detective,’ I told myself.

A few children playing with a ball came to look at me. I don’t know who they thought I was but they were properly mistrustful of authority, and soon went away again. I could have been a policeman, a debt collector, or anyone. It struck me how ridiculous this was, me sitting here. But I wanted to get a look at Ray Boyd; to size him up, as it were.

When his flat door opened, Boyd came out accompanied by the witness. I wished I knew her name, but at least I knew where she stayed, Jack had told me. Boyd and his girlfriend were walking. I tried following them in the car but they were walking too slowly for this to be feasible, so I parked by the side of the road and followed on foot. After a quarter of a mile, I reckoned I knew where they were headed: the girlfriend’s flat on the Horseshoe Estate, where Sophie Marshall had lived. I’d seen enough; I headed back to my car. A policeman had already ticketed it.

Barry Cooke himself was next.

Again, I used the court records. I even had a quiet word with his solicitor. Meeting casually, we spoke of the identity parade, and laughed about it. Then I asked him about Barry Cooke. Barraclough didn’t seem surprised or suspicious that I was asking. We were just two lawyers, enjoying a bit of a chat.

The more I looked at Barry Cooke, the more feasible it all seemed. A mugging gone wrong. Violence taken too far. And the MO fitted his own: I knew that already. All he had on his side were his alibi, his protestation of innocence, and the fact that the witness had singularly failed to identify him. He was still the chief suspect. However, the police had no reason to disbelieve the witness, to suspect that she was playing some game. Not unless it could be shown that she was. I had a picture in my head: an apparent witness who has come forward not to assist the inquiry but to ensure it takes a wrong turn. That she picked me out was an accident; it could have been anybody… anybody but the actual culprit. I liked this picture and wondered if Jack could see it too.

As I was leaving the court, I saw a figure dart round a corner. I went to my car and sat in it for a moment, pretending to look for something in my briefcase, but really keeping an eye on my wing mirror. The figure reappeared, seeking me out.

It was Barry Cooke.

I drove out of the car park and a couple of hundred yards down the road to a burger restaurant, where I pulled in. I waited, but there was no sign of a following car. Now that I thought about it, I’d read in one of the court reports that Barry Cooke could not drive. It was on his side in the Marshall case, for as Barraclough had said, Cooke’s alibi was that he was at a party four miles away from where Sophie Marshall’s body had been found. No way could he have walked that distance and back. Someone would have to have driven him there, which, as Barraclough said with a smile, was most unlikely.

Still, Barry Cooke had been to court several times. So had Ray Boyd. And so, in all probability, had Boyd’s girlfriend. Any one of them might have seen Sophie Marshall before. Maybe she’d been picked out…

None of which got me any further. Proof was the thing. The police needed proof. I waited, but there was no sign of Barry Cooke, so I started the car again and drove home to my wife.

Next morning, as I parked the car outside my offices, I saw him again. He was good at being furtive, but solicitors deal with furtive people all the time, and I spotted him straightaway. I locked the car and started towards him. At first, I thought he was going to run for it, but he decided instead to stand his ground. He put his hands in his pockets and waited for me.

‘Are you following me?’ I asked.

Barry Cooke shook his head. ‘Got a right to be here, haven’t I?’

‘I saw you yesterday, skulking.’

He shrugged. ‘So?’

‘So why are you following me?’

He considered a response. Bad liars usually take their time. ‘That witness picked you out,’ he eventually said.

‘Yes?’

‘But the coppers are still hassling me.’

‘You want me to do something about it?’

He frowned. ‘No, I just… that witness picked you out.’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous. She made a mistake, that’s all.’ I paused. ‘Maybe she was paid to make a mistake.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘How do you mean?’

But I just shrugged. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘are you going to stop following me, or must I call DI Preston?’

He screwed up his face. ‘Preston, that bastard. You’re all in it together, you lot. All matey, all favours and stuff.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

He just made another face and walked away. I watched him go. Then, trembling a little, I went into my office and opened a fresh bottle of brandy.

I knew I had to talk to the witness. The problem was: Would she talk to me?

It was difficult. I was finding it harder to get things straight in my mind. I knew I was in dangerous territory, and that things might get worse still. I spent all the rest of that day watching for Barry Cooke, but I never saw him. Maybe my warning was enough; maybe he was keeping his distance for reasons of his own. But someone did scratch my car. I phoned my wife and told her about it, explaining that after work I was going to get respray estimates from a couple of garages.

Then I headed out to Sophie Marshall’s estate.

I parked at a distance and had to walk down the very alley where she’d been attacked. It was a dreary spot, a narrow corridor bordered by high brick walls covered in graffiti. There was a railway line nearby, trains thundering past. A terrible place to die. I had to stop for a moment and control my breathing. But I went on.

It is difficult, more difficult than I’d imagined, to hang about on these estates while remaining inconspicuous. People came to their windows, and children stopped playing to stare at me. So I climbed the stairwell and walked about a bit outside the lines of flats, looking like I knew where I was going.

It was hopeless. After a nervous half-hour, I decided to return to my car. I was sitting in the driver’s seat, hands clutching the steering wheel, trying to calm myself down, when I saw her. She walked on loud high-heeled boots, spiky things, as spiky as she herself was. She wore tight black denims, ripped at the knees, and a baggy black T-shirt. She hadn’t brought Boyd with her, thank God. I didn’t want to have to deal with Boyd, not if I could help it. She had her head down, either sullenly or just to avoid eye contact with other pedestrians. Standard practice these days, sad to say.

She passed within feet of my car, but didn’t so much as glance at it. I gave her half a minute to walk down the alley, then got out of the car, locked it, and followed. I was giving her plenty of time. By the time I got to the far end of the alley, she had already crossed the quadrangle and was somewhere in the block. Then I saw her appear on the third floor. She walked to the fourth door from the stairs, and opened it with a key.

I followed.

I stood outside her door for the best part of a minute, then bent down to look through her letterbox. I could hear music, probably a radio. But no voices, no other sounds. I stood up again and looked at the nameplate on the door. It was a piece of cheap lined paper, stuck to the paintwork with tape. AFFLICK, it said. I knocked a four-beat rhythm, a friendly knock, then waited.

There was no spy hole, so when she came to the door she opened it. No security chain either. I pushed the door open wide and went in.

‘Hoi,’ she said, her voice a squeal, ‘what the hell-?’

Her voice died as she recognised me. Her cheeks went red.

‘I just want to talk, that’s all. Five minutes of your time.’

‘I’ll yell bloody murder,’ she said.

I smiled. ‘I don’t doubt it. Look, I wouldn’t have come here, but I need to speak to you.’

‘What about?’

‘I think you know. Can we sit down?’

She took me into the living-room, which was little more than a hovel. She went straight to the fireplace, switched off the radio, opened a packet of cigarettes, and lit one for herself. She never took her eyes off me. She looked scared. I cleared a space and sat down on the sofa. I crossed my legs, trying to look relaxed, hoping she wouldn’t see me as a threat. I didn’t want that.

‘What do you want?’ she said.

‘Do you know a young man called Barry Cooke?’

‘Never heard of him,’ she said defiantly.

‘No? He was on that lineup with me. He was standing right next to me. Short, hair tied back, scruffy.’

‘You’ve got a nerve coming here.’

She had pulled herself together. I’ll give her that; she was strong-willed.

‘Barry Cooke’, I continued, ‘is the man the police think killed Sophie Marshall. They were hoping you’d identify him.’

‘I identified you. It was you I saw.’

I smiled and looked at the floor between us. ‘The police are trying to pin down Barry Cooke.’

‘So what?’

‘So… you could help them.’

‘What?’

‘You could remember something about the man you saw that night. You could… change your mind.’ I reached into my jacket pocket and brought out an envelope.

‘What’s that?’ she said, curious now.

‘Money, a lot of it. A one-off payment for your cooperation. ’

‘You want Cooke convicted?’

‘I want someone convicted, and it may as well be him.’

Well, hadn’t I left Sophie’s body that way on purpose, remembering Cooke’s MO? Hadn’t I taken her money and jewellery? But I hadn’t counted on Cooke having such a strong alibi. I hadn’t counted on there being a witness.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘take the money.’

‘But it was you I saw that night.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said, feeling this to be the truth. What did it matter, a brief affair gone badly wrong? A threat to tell wife and colleagues? A chase through an alley? What did any of it matter in the wider scheme?

‘You killed her.’

‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘But you did, and now you want to fit up Cooke.’

‘What I want,’ I said quietly, ‘is to give you some money. What have you got to lose? The police didn’t believe you when you pointed me out at the lineup. They’ll never believe you. You might as well take the money and tell them some other story.’

She came towards me, her eyes on the envelope. I handed it up to her. She took it and placed it on the mantelpiece. ‘Barry Cooke,’ she said quietly.

‘Short,’ I said, ‘grubby, with a ponytail and spots and a few missing teeth. He’s mugged women before. You’d be doing society a favour.’

She stared at me. ‘Right,’ she said sourly. ‘A favour.’

I stood up and buttoned my jacket. ‘I think we understand one another,’ I said. Then I walked out into her hall. I was opening the front door when she called to me. I turned. She was standing in the living-room doorway. She had the cigarette in her mouth, her eyes slitted against the smoke, and she was hauling at the hem of her T-shirt with both hands, tugging it up. I didn’t realise what she was doing. Then I saw. There were strips of tape on her stomach, and a thin snaking black wire attached to a black transmitter. She was bugged.

I yanked open the front door and Jack Preston was standing there in front of me.

‘Hello, Roddy,’ he said.

We sat in Interview Room A, having a chat.

Jack explained it all quite quickly. How Gayle Afflick had seen me in the courts, the day her boyfriend Ray was up for assault, and how she had recognised me as the man she’d seen that night. Her boyfriend told her I was a solicitor, and this worried her. Who would take her word against that of a solicitor? She knew one decent copper, someone who might believe her: DI Jack Preston.

That time in Jack’s office, it had been a setup, neatly played by Jack and Halliwell to get me into a lineup, where Gayle Afflick could identify me. Jack wanted to see how I’d react, what I’d do. He had a good idea I’d want to talk to the witness afterwards.

It all fitted, as far as he was concerned. There were rumours around the court that Sophie Marshall had been seeing a married man. It figured that this man most probably knew her from her professional life. (She didn’t have much of a social one.) When Jack found that my car had been ticketed on a road near the Horseshoe Estate, a long way off my usual patch, he knew he was on to something.

So he’d had Gayle Afflick tailed, and had her wired up too, taking the whole thing carefully, nice and slow, because he knew how easy it would be to lose me. But he hadn’t lost me. He had it all now, the whole story. And he had me. He asked if I wanted a solicitor.

‘Of course I want a solicitor.’

‘I hear Tony Barraclough’s good,’ Jack said.

That smell was in my nostrils, that police station smell. There were, I decided suddenly, worse smells, far worse smells, in the wider scheme of things.