A Little Learning (12 page)

Lucy had no idea whether Horny Harry existed. He might, because Percy knew some pretty dodgy characters, having worked for so long in the area. She allowed him to warm his hands in more conventional ways. Then she finished her tea and gave the neighbours more grounds for noise speculation.

They had time only for the briefest of breakfasts. They met the man from next door outside, getting into his car as Percy unlocked his. They exchanged good mornings and the man, a friendly looking chap of around fifty, cast an appreciative glance over the girl whom that lonely inspector next door had managed to secure for himself.

He had found Percy a pleasant enough chap, in their limited dealings. He was quite glad for him. And not a little envious.

Fourteen

The anorak’s name turned out to be Kevin Allcock. After a night in Brunton nick and a police station breakfast, he was at a low ebb. Even from the most charitable viewpoint, his stubble was now definitely long enough to be scruffy rather than fashionable. Moreover, he had been forced to empty his pockets at the desk before he was charged with the possession and supply of drugs. The very substance which might have helped him to keep up his spirits through a long night had been left behind with the station sergeant.

It was a situation tailor-made for Percy Peach.

The Detective Inspector arrived in the interview room like a bouncing ball. He looked his adversary up and down, approved of the state he was in, and said, ‘You remember DC Murphy from last night. I think we’ll have the recorder on; I often like to play things back later, when a prisoner and I have had a few laughs together.’ He put a cassette in the machine and announced that the interview with Kevin Charles Allcock was beginning at eight forty-two, with DI Peach and DC Murphy present.

Then he pretended to study the notes he had already memorized before he came into the room, while the sallow face opposite him looked unwillingly up from the small square table into the features of his latest tormentor, and Allcock’s narrow hips shifted uneasily on the hard chair. Peach shook his head sadly and tut-tutted twice before he allowed his round face to relax into a satisfied smile. ‘Lot of trouble you’re in, Mr Allcock.’

‘Wasn’t doing anything.’

Disappointment flooded back into the moonlike face around the black moustache. ‘Aw, come on, Kevin, you can do better than that. Make a game of it! We’ll be handing you over to the Drugs Squad team, presently, but the least you can do is give us a good game first.’

‘Fuck off, Peach. I wasn’t doing anything.’

‘Just going about your lawful business when this great rough copper grabbed your collar and dragged you in, were you?’

‘That’s about it, yes.’

‘Well, well, well! I thought Kevin was a good name for a man never seen without an anorak. I’m beginning to think Allcock is an even more appropriate handle for a man attempting to sell us tales like this.’

‘Fuck off, Peach!’ But now there was fear in the grey, slightly bloodshot eyes. Allcock had expected the head-on attack. Being flicked about like a captive mouse was much more unnerving. He was already sorry that he’d refused a brief.

Whereas Percy Peach was pleased about that refusal. Much easier to conduct a proper dialogue with a known villain when there wasn’t some poncy young lawyer reminding him of his rights all the time. He said with a sudden harshness. ‘Caught in possession of Class A and B drugs with a street value estimated at eight thousand pounds. Caught selling three different Class A drugs to students at the University of East Lancashire.’

‘I wasn’t pushing. I admit possession. The drugs were for my own use. Private and recreational.’

Peach leaned back and laughed out loud. ‘That’s all cock, Allcock!’ He beamed a simple delight in his wordplay. ‘And you know it. You were caught red-handed and banged to rights. Wasn’t he, DC Murphy?’

‘Certainly was, sir. Never seen anything so blatant. Almost gave himself up, he did, poor sod.’ Brendan Murphy was happy to make his contribution. He sat just behind Peach’s left shoulder, and in his very different young, fresh face, his smile was an unnerving replica of his leader’s.

Kevin Allcock was duly unnerved. His brain wouldn’t work properly, just when he most needed it. He fell back on the villain’s last resort. ‘You just prove that! I wasn’t pushing drugs at all. Most of that eight thousand quid’s worth was planted on me by this bugger!’

The two grins grew wider, instead of disappearing as he had hoped. Peach said with a weary disdain, ‘Tell him, DC Murphy.’

‘Yes, sir. We’ve got signed statements from the lads we brought in with you, Allcock. They handed over money to you in return for class A drugs. Ecstasy, rock cocaine and Rohypnol. After you’d given them a sales pitch for Rohypnol as the ideal tool for date-rape.’

Allcock’s sallow face became older and greyer beneath the stubble of beard. His last hope had just died. He said automatically, hopelessly, ‘You’ll have to prove it.’

Peach was almost sorry for him. ‘We just did, sunshine. When you get the brief you so unwisely refused, he’ll tell you to plead guilty. You’ll go down for this. For eight or ten years, I should think, with your record.’

Allcock had been done for supplying drugs before. He’d known they would throw this at him, but it had still come as a surprise to find his record pitched in like this, just after the body blow that those bloody students had grassed him up. He said dully, ‘They can’t do that. I’m just a small man, earning…’ His shoulders dropped hopelessly and his slight figure seemed to shrink even further.

‘Earning an honest living, Kevin? I’m glad you stopped in time. That really would have been all cock. You’ve strained our patience quite enough. I think we’ll let you stew in a cell for a while and wait for the Drugs Squad. Tell them everything you know about the people who were providing you with your supplies.’

‘Not me! Kevin Allcock ain’t no grass.’ The stubborn, hopeless attempt at pride, the familiar Pavlovian reaction of the small-time crook.

‘Then you’ll go down for a long time, Kevin.’ Peach, looking as if that would be an entirely satisfactory happening, folded his papers and seemed ready to leave. Then he said, almost as if it were an afterthought, ‘Unless, of course, you happen to be implicated in this murder we’re investigating at the UEL, in which case it could be life.’

The word ‘murder’ was inserted at the perfect moment, when the defeated pusher thought that things could not possibly get worse. It was a word which carried a certain glamour, even among lesser criminals. And to Kevin Allcock, the mention of the word brought a new fear. ‘What d’ you mean, murder? I ‘aven’t never —’

‘On the site at UEL, Kevin. Not more than two hundred yards from the spot you were apprehended trafficking in drugs last night.’

‘But murder’s nothing to do with me. I never —’

‘Often involved in modern murders in some way, the drug industry, isn’t it, Kevin? Billions of pounds involved. Well worth the odd murder, some people think.’

‘I know nothing about any murder.’

‘Have you for an accessory, I shouldn’t wonder, with your record.’

‘Look, I’m no murderer, Mr Peach. I’m a small-time pusher, that’s all.’ The defiant obscenities were now long gone, the tone was wheedling.

That whine of supplication, familiar in Peach’s ears from his dealings with hundreds of small criminals, showed that this meat was nicely tenderized. ‘You’ll need to prove that to me, Kevin, by telling me everything you know about the drug scene on the site. Completing the picture for us, as you might say.’

Perhaps Allcock really believed the bluff that the CID already knew a lot about the drug scene at UEL — Peach actually knew nothing, and a call to the Drugs Squad Superintendent before this meeting had revealed that they knew precious little more. Or perhaps the shabby figure in front of them was merely frightened out of his wits by now. He took a long breath and made a last attempt to be crafty, ‘Help me, won’t it, when it comes to sentence? If I tell you all I know now, I mean?’

‘We don’t do deals, Kevin. Not with the likes of you. The drugs people will very likely point out to the judge that you’ve helped them to name some bigger boys, if that’s the way it turns out.’

‘Anyway, I ‘aven’t much choice, ‘ave I? You’ve got me banged to rights, as you said.’ He was rationalizing the fact that he was about to grass, as small men usually did. He looked desperately from Peach’s impassive face to Brendan Murphy, who gave him the briefest of confirmatory nods. ‘I don’t know where my drugs come from — honest I don’t. There’s a drop for me. I pick up what I’ve ordered and leave a list of what I want the next week.’

‘Where’s the drop, Kevin?’

‘Behind an empty warehouse, in Burnley. Small room at the back. Used to be a nightwatchman’s place, I think.’

Peach would leave the Drugs Squad to get the details, to see how much more they could squeeze out of this dubious accessory. It was their case, once he had checked there was no connection with the Carter killing. ‘What about the university site, Kevin? Fill us in on what you know about that.’

There was the briefest of hesitations: they could see him forcing himself to break the only real code he had, that you didn’t grass. Then he said, ‘I guess you know most of this. The guy who controls drugs in the university works on the site. McLean. Malcolm McLean.’

Peach concealed his excitement beneath a nod which implied that this was no news to him. ‘And how does he control it, Kevin?’

‘Tells me where to contact people. How and what to supply. Lets the students and a few of the staff on the site know where to come for the goods, I suppose.’ He had turned sullen, but he was giving them information, which was all that mattered. He looked up suddenly. ‘But you know all this already, don’t you.’

‘Maybe, Kevin. But I’ll put in a word for you, whenever I can. Say you did your best to be helpful. Know where he lives, do you, this McLean?’

‘No. He’s a lecturer in the place, though, isn’t he?’

They dismissed him then, quickly. Peach could scarcely conceal his excitement until the wretched figure had been led from the room. A drug scene at the UEL, and a member of staff controlling it, apparently. Murder might have a drugs connection, after all.

*

On a crisp November morning, Detective Sergeant Lucy Blake was quite envious of the students of the University of East Lancashire. There seemed more sun and more bracing air here on this green campus than in the old cotton town of Brunton, which was no more than four miles away but completely invisible from this site in the Ribble valley. The students ran or walked between the modern, well-spaced buildings of the different faculties, hailing friends, exchanging banter. They were privileged, spending three years in a place like this, whilst the contemporaries of their school years were discovering the harshness of real working life in factories or offices. She didn’t mind the privilege: she just hoped they appreciated it. Not yet twenty-seven and already thinking like a middle-aged woman, Lucy told herself ruefully.

Give extra attention to all the people who live or work on the site, Carmen Campbell had said. It remained to be seen whether that was genuine advice or an attempt to get the police attention off her own back. The man Lucy was going to see didn’t live on the site. But he held a unique position there, and occupied his own headquarters. And cross-referencing on the police computer had thrown up one startling fact about him.

She had parked her bulbous little Vauxhall Corsa in the main car park quite deliberately. It wasn’t just that it would be nice to arrive unheralded at her destination; she wanted to absorb as much as she could of the atmosphere of this academic centre where a murderer might be lurking. It took her ten minutes to walk to the extreme edge of the campus which was her destination, but she found the walk in the sunshine instructive as well as enjoyable.

The Reverend Thomas Matthews had been disappointed by the attendance for Holy Communion on this Thursday morning, but the few students who were there had promised to try to drum up a little more support for the three Thursdays which remained before the Christmas vacation. He was wandering round the cold and rather bleak chaplaincy when he saw the red-haired young woman studying the board outside which announced his name and the hours he was here.

His first thought was that this was someone wanting his services as chaplain; he was both disappointed and disturbed when she showed him her identification as a detective sergeant from Brunton CID. They went into the small study cum robing room behind the main room of the chaplaincy where he held his services and talked to his religious action groups.

‘This is a routine visit as a result of our investigation into the murder of Dr Carter,’ Lucy said. ‘We’re questioning everyone who has a base on the site. There may be things which don’t seem important to you but which become significant to us, as part of the picture of the life of Dr Carter which we are assembling.’

He had seemed nervous when she mentioned the purpose of her visit, which the detective in her said was a good start. She had never had to question a clergyman before, not on her own. She had to conquer a surprisingly deep-seated prejudice which told her that a man in a dog collar could not possibly be involved even peripherally in a murder inquiry. The Reverend Matthews now said, ‘I don’t live on the site, you know. I have a base here, but I live at my parish: St Catherine’s, in Brunton. They’ve sold the old Victorian vicarage and build a small modern replacement; it’s more than adequate for my needs.’

He was talking quickly, in danger of saying too much: it was another sign that he was uneasy. Lucy said, ‘You have a special position here, though, and I imagine that because of your function you move about the campus more than most tutors.’

‘Yes. I go wherever it seems I can be of use. I visit a student who has problems on his or her own ground, if that seems appropriate. But only if they invite me, of course.’

‘So you know what is going on better than most.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. Sometimes I think I’m the last to get to know things.’

‘But you knew about Dr Carter’s death pretty quickly.’