Bones & Silence (32 page)

Wield said gently, 'Like thumping people, do you?'

Medwin shrugged.

'Don't mind a bit of a mill,' he said.

'Is that right? Why
is
that?'

'Don't know. Gives me a buzz. Let's me know I'm alive.'

'Someone thumps you back hard enough, it might let you know you're dead,' suggested Wield.

Another shrug. He was a good-looking boy; blond hair cropped short up the sides, fashionably coiffured on top; nose slightly crooked (result of some old fight perhaps?); eyes deep blue; smile attractive; cheeks lightly downed; jaw edged with stubble to show he'd been too quickly roused for shaving . . . Wield pulled himself up. What had started as a professional description was turning into . . . what? He reminded himself that Medwin, Jason, went to football matches to cause mayhem, lay in wait for gays at park gates, was planning to disrupt the holiday pleasure of thousands of visitors to the city.

'So you don't mind if someone hurts you or kills you?' he said.

'Not much. No one else does.'

'No? I see. No friends, eh? Find it hard to get on with people?'

He touched a nerve. For a second he saw the eyes that had glared at him with a killing hatred the night of the attack. Then a blink, and the smiling boy with the crooked nose was back.

'I got friends,' he said. 'Lots of them.'

'Name six,' said Wield.

'What do you mean?' demanded Medwin, puzzled. 'You don't think I'm going to give you lot my mates' names just like that!'

'Why not? They're not crooks, are they?'

'I'm not a crook and I'm here,' said Medwin.

'All right, I'll put it another way. Tell me what you were doing on these three nights and give me the names of any witnesses who'll support you.'

He scribbled three dates on a sheet of paper and pushed it across the table.

Medwin looked at them blankly. The first was February 6th, the night the young man had been thrown from the London train. The second was February 26th when the Rose and Crown had been wrecked and the landlord put into hospital. The third was March 1st, the night that Wield had been attacked.

'Well?' prompted the sergeant.

'You've got to be joking,' said Medwin. 'Takes me all my time to remember last night.'

'Let me jog your memory. Sixth of Feb, City lost four nil in the Smoke, and a young lad was pushed off a train near Peterborough.'

'Now hang about!' exclaimed Medwin. 'No way can you tie me in with that.'

He sounded genuinely indignant.

'You didn't go to the game, then?'

'Of course I did. Never miss. But I weren't on that train or any train. Went down by car with some of my mates.'

'Names. Addresses,' said Wield tossing a pencil over the table, adding as Medwin didn't pick it up, 'Come on, son. They'll be witnessing they couldn't have been on the train either, won't they?'

Reluctantly he admitted the logic and began scrawling on the paper.

When he'd finished Wield looked at the list.

'Crowded car,' he observed. 'Here, this one's got no address.'

'Don't know where he's living now. He moved away south. We bumped into each other at the game and had a few bevvies after and he said he was thinking of coming back up on a visit so I said would he like a lift and he said yeah. He's likely gone south again by now. I might try it myself. I mean, there's nowt to keep anyone up here, is there?'

'You'd be surprised,' said Wield menacingly. 'Right, now try City's home game against the Reds. Nil-nil draw.'

He let the youth work this one out for himself, saw realization dawn, but there was no indignant protestation of innocence this time, just a veiling of the eyes and a shaking of the head.

'Got me there,' he said. 'Don't remember that one.'

'I thought you never missed a match?' said Wield.

'Almost never. But when you see such a lot, you can't recall 'em all, can you?'

Wield nodded friendly agreement and made a note that this was one for the injured landlord to see.

'So what about the other date?' he asked.

'March first?' said the youth shaking his head once more. 'Means nowt.'

'It means you know that the Reds game was on Friday February twenty-sixth for a start,' observed Wield drily. 'Now there wasn't a game this night, you're right. Not a game of football anyway.'

'So what did happen? Give us a clue, won't you?' the youth said, grinning.

He really has no idea, Wield assessed. Queer-bashing probably wasn't worth remembering, a mere training session for the real fights at the weekend. Now was the moment to jump on him, to watch his expression as he realized he'd assaulted a cop, to listen to his lies and to squeeze from him a list of names to support some extempore alibi. One of them would break, kids always did. And a cop's word would be enough for most magistrates to pour shit on him from a great height.

But Wield found himself hesitating. He could sense danger here. A bright lawyer could offer the defence that Medwin had genuinely believed he was being propositioned in the hope that a normally prejudiced jury would accept this as provocation to violence. Suppose he went further and tried to find something in Wield's words or manner which might have justified such a mistake? Suppose he sensed a hesitation and asked Wield direct if he were gay? Philosophically, ever since his life crisis some eighteen months earlier, Wield had been 'out'. In practical terms, and certainly in terms of his professional image this had meant very little so far, but he had derived peace and strength from the certainty that he would never again prevaricate if faced by the question direct.

But to risk inviting this question in open court with some twinkle-toed brief tap-dancing all over him was no part of his bargain. It could bring the Force into ridicule, possibly get the charge dismissed, certainly set the right wing press sniffing around, scenting blood, offering deals, hinting protection. It could mean his career gone.

But perhaps, in fact probably, it would never come to this or anywhere near it. Simple evidence of what he was doing at the time, a police officer on duty viciously assaulted by a gang of young thugs, dealt with by a nice fascist magistrate with some bored legal aid brief somnambulating through the cross-questioning . . .

He had to do it, whatever. Big risk, little risk, no risk at all. Duty, faith, call it what you will; that personal imperative which, expanded to a general principle, makes religions; corrupted, makes fanatics; but ignored, makes existence meaningless; this was the only arbiter.

He said, 'On Tuesday March the first, you waylaid a man at the entrance to Kipling Gardens, and with the assistance of others as yet unknown, you assaulted him.'

'You what? Who says?' demanded Medwin, unable to hide his consternation.

'I say,' said Wield. 'You should try to pick on people your own size, son. Like dwarves.'

'You're saying it was you?' He stared at Wield in dawning recognition first of the face, then of the trap he'd fallen into.

'That's right,' said Wield. 'You really are in trouble, aren't you?'

There was a tap at the door and Seymour stuck his head in.

'Super's here and wondering how you're getting on,' he said.

'I'll have a word,' said Wield. 'Mr Medwin here turns out to be the young gent who assaulted me m March. He's just going to write a statement. Give him a hand, will you?'

He went out glancing at his watch. Not yet seven. I bet the fat sod's feeling all virtuous about getting up early, he thought.

He was being unjust though he couldn't have guessed it, for there was nothing in Dalziel's appearance to show he hadn't been to bed at all. On his return home from the Gents, he had soaked in a piping hot bath for more than an hour. Then, feeling himself more famished than fatigued, he had breakfasted on a black pudding boiled up in a panful of oxtail soup, sitting naked at his kitchen table, staring out through the soft focus of mucky glass and a damp May morning towards the window where he'd had his only living glimpse of Gail Swain.

Her face he couldn't remember, and next time he saw it, it mostly wasn't there. But the tits . . . in his mind's eye he saw the tits again. His libido seemed to be having an Indian summer, or perhaps it was a Malayan summer, for it was since his close contact with Chung that he'd noticed his imagination running hot. Which reminded him, he was due at rehearsal at ten, so instead of sitting here exciting himself, he'd be better off getting a couple of early hours in.

'Not done yet?' he now greeted his sergeant. 'You're just supposed to be processing these lads, not getting their life stories.'

'This one turned out to be a bit more complicated. Seems to be clear on the train job, says he travelled by car that day, gave me these names as back-up,' said Wield, passing over the list. 'I reckon he's worth looking at for the pub riot, though. He went very amnesiac on that one. And something else came up. I recognized him as the leader of that gang that beat me up.'

'Oh yes,' said Dalziel with a lack of interest almost hurtful in the light of Wield's recent soul-searching. 'Wieldy, this name here, the one without an address...’

'Oh, him. Medwin says he was an old mate he bumped into at the match and gave a lift to. Living down south and just fancied coming back here on impulse. Sounds like he was pleased. Why the interest, sir?'

'The name, lad. The
name.
Tony Appleyard! I'm surprised you didn't spot it. Too early in the morning for you, is it?'

Even now it didn't register immediately. One man's obsession is another man's yawn. Then he remembered. Arnie Stringer's vanished son-in-law, whose continued absence Dalziel seemed to take as a personal affront! If he'd made the connection himself and gone running, he might have picked up a house point. Now his only reward for getting up so early was Dalziel's reproof.

He said, 'Needn't be the same, sir. Lots of Appleyards in Yorkshire.'

Dalziel looked heavenward and said, 'O ye of little faith! Let's go and find out, shall we?'

Though Dalziel's interview with Jason Medwin breached no human rights agreement, it was nevertheless an act of terror.

The fat man oozed avuncular charm, but as he smiled encouragement and nodded approval, his hands were doing terrible things to a sheet of paper, a plastic cup, and finally a lead pencil which he snapped into four pieces each of which he crumbled to splinters between finger and thumb.

Medwin had started with cheek - ‘Fucking hell, you're really bringing in the heavy mob, aren't you?' - then laughed uproariously.

Dalziel joined in and for a few seconds the two laughed in unison. But Medwin's amusement slowly diminuendoed through a nervous chuckle to a fearful silence, while Dalziel's guffaws went on and on, putting Wield in mind of the Laughing Policeman on the front at Blackpool which as a child he'd always found more frightening than funny. At last Dalziel too modulated to a smile, but by now it was clear that as far as Medwin was concerned, Dalziel's smile held more threat than Wield's grim features set at maximum grue.

It was quickly established that the youth's friend was indeed the Super's own Appleyard.

'Got some slag in the club, and her dad made him marry her. I'd have told him to sod off but Tone never had much bottle.'

'Can't all be heroes,' agreed Dalziel amicably. 'So he ran off south?'

The youth considered. None of this was self-incriminatory, so there was no point in misleading this fat bastard and (eyeing those restless hands) mebbe a lot of point cooperating with him.

'Nah, I reckon he went looking for work to start off, then just sort of got lost.'

'And it was just chance you met him?'

'Yeah. He were always a supporter, mind, and with them being down there, it was natural he'd go to the game.'

'But you didn't know he was in that bit of London?'

'Nah. Look, we weren't that friendly, just saw each other around the games, know what I mean? It was him came after me at the match. I thought I must owe him money or something, the way he grabbed hold of me.'

'So he was glad to see you.'

Medwin nodded. 'Yeah, he was. He looked a bit rough and I asked him if he was working and he said he'd been doing a bit on the lump, nothing regular, and he'd not felt up to much recently anyway. He kept on asking questions about back here, about his wife and things. Well, I didn't know her from shit and in the end when we'd had a few bevvies, I said why don't you come back up and see for yourself? It's only a quick belt up the mo'way. He said, why not? dead casual like, but underneath he were right keen. I'll tell you what, old Tone were no advert for heading south to make your fortune!'

'If he was in such a bad way, why'd he not come back earlier?' said Dalziel. It sounded more like a question to himself than to the youth but Medwin wasn't taking chances.

'Would have done if the tart's old man hadn't warned him off.'

'What's that? Appleyard said he'd been warned off by his father-in-law? When? How?'

The intensity of Dalziel's interest hit the youth like a fist.

'I don't know, do I? I'm just saying what Tone said. I said he'd be OK back here with the Security plus whatever he could bum off his wife's family. And he said, the only brass I'll get from her fucking preaching father is coffin handles. Then he went on - But sod him, I don't care what he says, I'll come back if I like, and see what he can do! I said you should stick one on the old wanker, Tone, and he said yeah, but I reckoned it were the drink talking.'

Who needed hypnotism to trigger total recall? Wield asked himself admiringly. Fat Andy could induce it wide awaking, and probably plant as many conditioned responses as he liked too.

'And when you got here, what did you do?'

'It were close on midnight and we dropped him near the pea-canning factory on the ring road.'

'Because that's where he wanted to be?'

'Not exactly. To tell the truth he were a bit of a pain. We'd had to stop a few times so he could honk, and when he had to get out again on the edge of town we thought, fuck it! and drove off. I mean, you try to help some people but they just won't help themselves, will they?'