Dead or Alive (7 page)

‘What about all the circumstantial evidence, sir?

‘His brief'll cut through that like a knife through butter. No, it was all good stuff to support what Dench was going to say, but Dench was our main man. Without him we'll have to drop the charges. Mind you, we can tell the bloke in witness protection we're holding him and his statement in abeyance until such time as we nail Formosa again.'

‘That's if he'll agree to it.'

‘He won't have much choice, Lenny. It does mean we'll have to provide him with another identity and keep him in witness protection until then. Expensive job that.'

Cope dropped his head. ‘Bloody hell, sir! What about them poor kids?'

‘I know, and you did well, but this is no reflection on you.' Ibbotson looked up and sat back in his seat, elbows on the chair arms, steepling his fingers.

‘Tell me, Lenny, are you still shagging Blacky's wife?'

Cope hesitated before saying, ‘We're in a relationship, sir.'

‘Ah, of course. That's the current jargon for shagging isn't it? I often wish I was in a relationship with Mrs Ibbotson, but all we are is man and wife.'

‘I've no intention of ever becoming anyone's husband, sir. Once bitten, twice shy and all that.'

‘What shocked me about Blacky,' said Ibbotson, ‘was all this stuff about him beating his wife up. I didn't think he was like that. Quite an amiable chap, I thought. He could scare the shit out of a suspect in the interview room, but that was all an act.'

‘I don't really know the man, sir, what with us working different shifts all the time I've been here, but she told me he was cruel to her.'

‘We brought him in last night, did you know?'

‘So I heard, sir. Drunk, was he?'

‘Not really. Sober enough to drive, apparently. I spoke to him – I got the impression that he was just angry with the world.'

‘I don't think the world's too pleased with him, sir.'

‘On a more important matter; I'm expecting Mr Strathmore to come in and ask why we've dropped the charges against Vince Formosa. I want you to sit in with me on that one.'

‘Of course, sir.'

‘He'll ask if we think his children are still alive and, to be honest, I've got no idea. He's put out a reward of twenty-five thousand pounds for anyone helping in their return.'

‘Doesn't seem much sir, considering he's a multi-millionaire.'

‘He wanted to offer more but in my experience these huge rewards attract all sorts of chancers and time-wasters. I just hope they're still alive.'

‘It could be that Formosa is keeping them alive for some future extortion.'

‘Yes, I'd thought of that but, in view of Formosa knowing we have him clearly in our sights for all this, he'll only keep them alive long enough for them to talk to Strathmore on the phone the day before the handover. And don't think the handover will be a simultaneous swap. Not on your life. He'll ask for money first, after which he'll promise to release the kids, only he won't because they'll be dead and never heard of again, and all this time Formosa will be free and gloating because we've got nothing on him. I find this very hard to take, Lenny. I'd like to lift the slimy bastard, take him into the cells and belt the truth out of him.'

‘You and me both, sir.'

Ibbotson stared at his DI, remembering Sep's accusation that he was in Formosa's pocket. Then he remembered a time when Lee Dench grassed up Formosa to Cope and how Cope had Formosa arrested. Hardly the action of a copper who was in Formosa's pay. He cast the thought from his mind as being ridiculous but his stare slightly unnerved Cope.

‘Sir?'

‘Nothing. I was just day-dreaming about belting the truth out of Formosa.'

I
t was a month since his livelihood and his life in general had been taken from him and, with the weight of the world bearing down on his shoulders, Sep needed a sanctuary. The back room of the Sword and Slingshot was that very place; a personal haven he only ever shared with like souls with whom he occasionally played dominoes and had quiet conversations, but mostly where he read his newspapers and his books. The pub hadn't altered much in the hundred and fifty years of its existence. Its occasional refurbishments had been sympathetic to the pub's original character. There was an open fire, heavy oak furniture, a stone floor, an ancient stained-glass window, a large oil painting of a Yorkshire Dales village and proper beer pumps on the bar – none of your electric stuff. Best of all it was a quiet room with no muzak, no juke box, no television, no one-armed bandit, no dartboard, pool table or games machines; just tables and chairs and the hum of amiable conversation. If Sep had his own way it would still have a vague fug of cigarette smoke even though he didn't smoke himself. Sep was no fan of the nanny state.

But this evening his space had been plagued by youth, noisy youth – four male, three female. Youths had been in before but they'd only conversed with their electronic companions, which was OK with Sep, apart from the slightly annoying beeps. He had a device of his own, one that carried books. He approved of this. He could carry a library of books around without even making his pocket bulge. This was a far more useful device than the tablets and smartphones which could only be detached from their owners by amputation. The other thing he carried was a deep grievance at the world around him; a sense of personal injustice, and this was a heavy burden to bear.

He was sitting at his favourite table, the one under the stained-glass window. It was a heavy, oak table that had been in the pub since the place was built. It bore the scars of pewter tankards being banged down, dominoes shuffled, cigarette burns, scratched initials (a habit now banned by the management) and the dents and bruises inflicted during its tabletop clog-dancing years. It was an honest table that had its life history on display like the gnarled face of an old man who had survived a long, hard life. Maybe that was why Sep loved the table – because it was a survivor, something he was trying his best to be, but it wasn't easy. He looked up at the stained glass window as if for help and guidance. It had a picture of David slaying Goliath with a sword, hence the name of the pub. In the past this had had Sep insisting that David definitely used a slingshot to kill the giant, and this provoked a discussion at the time, a discussion that prompted the landlady to produce a bible which, in the Book of Samuel, mentions both versions. This led to a further discussion about the confusion caused by the bible, a confusion that had created many rival Christian religions. It was such talk that Sep had always found interesting, entertaining and even inspiring – but this juvenile giggling and guffawing bunch was none of those – just annoying.

No doubt students, the lot of them. Probably studying Soviet sociology, or equine psychology, or the tattoos of David Beckham, or some such bollocks. He'd been a student of English; up at Durham at a time when getting a place at such a university was a high achievement and being a student meant being among peers with intelligence and humour and wit, unlike this lot. Proper humour and wit and interesting conversation was seemingly beyond them, probably undeveloped due to electronic gadgets and easy living. Humour was important in Sep's world. It had helped keep him sane in his impossible circumstances, circumstances that might have had a lesser man slitting his throat.

Maybe had he been born fifty years earlier the world would have suited him better. Fifty years ago no one would have blamed him for killing that big fat bastard. It would have been covered up. The BFB's death had left the world a better and safer place, especially for children. No doubt about that.

But it was just his luck to have been born in a time where the grinning government man had told the country a blatant lie that had sent Sep to an Arab war where he'd legally killed men – men he regretted killing; men far more honourable than the dead BFB, as Sep had christened him. The BFB's death didn't trouble his conscience one bit. It was a war that had left his soldier brother blind and with one arm, not to mention a country destroyed, along with a hundred thousand lives; a country now at war with itself. So much for our army's intervention and his brother's terrible injuries.

It was why Sep didn't vote anymore. Not for anyone. He'd been brought up to be a socialist like his dad but he soon realized that politicians do too much damage – self-serving bastards most of them.

He could never vote for the grinning socialist leader, who had appointed himself a deputy who could barely string two intelligent sentences together. That's what good-looking girls used to do in his clubbing days; they'd partner up with a plain girl to make them stand out. His very pretty wife had done the same – 'twas ever thus, apparently. He'd have been far better off with her buck-toothed friend who was intelligent and amusing and decent. You can fix buck-teeth with implants. You can't implant intelligence and decency.

Sep's favourite political story was that of US president George Bush Senior whose vice president was Dan Quayle, a man of questionable intellect. The story was that Quayle was always accompanied by two FBI men who had orders to shoot him if anything happened to the president. These and other thoughts stumbled through Sep's mind as the loud intruders disturbed his tranquillity. Sep wasn't a political animal, he just despised bullshit.

So, here he was. The man wrongly accused of killing the BFB and who had been severely punished for it. He was remembering a story an old sergeant had told him; a story widely known at the station. In the early 1960s, as a young constable in Leeds, the sergeant and a colleague had been called to a local Mecca dance hall to speak to the manager about the various disturbances they were having there. They found him in his office in a compromising situation with three under-age girls. They'd reported the matter to an inspector who had told them to leave it because the manager was a big fundraiser for various charities and a friend of the police. He went on to become a famous TV personality whose paedophile activities would have been nipped-in-the-bud had the sergeant's report been acted upon there and then. Instead he'd cheated justice by dying before his hundreds of vile offences came to light.

These injustices constantly buzzed through Sep's mind, as did all this unfair stuff going on around him, with him getting the blame for it all and yet people moving in higher circles getting away with serious stuff. All these people going around free and respected and yet here he was, a dedicated police officer one day and now a sacked and discredited, unemployed non-citizen who was lucky to have avoided a manslaughter charge, and all because he'd used reasonable force on an epileptic paedophile Member of Parliament.

Rachel, his wife, had left him and had told lies about him beating her, and his daughter believed these lies. To make matters worse, his colleagues had turned their backs on him, and this included a young DC, John Curtis, of whom Sep had high hopes. A truthful word from any one of them would have made a big difference. What was all that about? He knew what it was about. They'd been got at by DI Cope, a copper who'd come up from the Met to avoid being caught up in the bent copper witch-hunt that was going on down there.

Sep had suspected that the Met cop was up to his old tricks up here. Sep had a colleague who had got himself transferred to the Met and who had worked out of the same station as Cope. He'd told Sep that Cope had taken a course in propaganda and he'd really taken to it, to the extent that he was a world expert in spreading rumours. Sep had voiced his doubts about him and the next thing he knew he'd become a victim of Cope's gossip spreading. His colleagues were persuaded to keep their distance from him lest they join him in being associated with the Big Fat Bastard's death. In fact this led to Sep being made a scapegoat for the BFB's death. He was also certain that Cope had somehow persuaded Sep's wife to tell lies about him beating her up. How the hell had he done that? It had been all he could do to keep his rage simmering and not boiling over, which would only get him into deeper trouble.

Today, with all these thoughts spinning round in his head, and all the noise around him, Sep was on a short fuse. He knew it and he knew he mustn't let it get the better of him. Think positive, Sep. OK, what's positive? Maybe women should run countries, that's positive. Bollocks to party politics, all this socialist/capitalist crap – also positive. Just let a good woman run the country like a mother runs her family. He was thinking of his own mother now. Dead when he was twelve. She'd have run the country properly. Not his dad, who was a sweet guy but useless after his mother died. His sisters all had families of their own to look after and Sep didn't want to bother them, so Clive had looked after him. His brother who was now blind and disabled after that stupid fucking war. His brother who was in a home for the disabled because Septimus no longer had the financial wherewithal to look after him. That hurt more than anything.

The only thing his mother ever got wrong was giving him the name Septimus. He'd have much preferred Fred or Joe. Clive wasn't too struck on his name either. He'd been named after Clive Staples Lewis who wrote
The Chronicles of Narnia
– their mother's favourite book.

She meant well, but Septimus wasn't a name you gave a kid growing up in a pit village. However, it did toughen him up. He'd dished out many a thump to kids who'd taken the piss out of his name. Eventually they all called him Sep, which was odd but OK with him.

One of the youths in the room joked that someone they knew had a beard like a lavatory brush. This prompted a hail of screeching laughter totally disproportionate to the joke and Sep felt his fuse fizzing towards the bomb in his brain. His recent circumstances had degraded his self-control somewhat.

‘Oh shit!' he muttered. ‘Don't lose it. Please do not lose it!'