Mortal Taste (20 page)

Bert Hook was soon distracted from such considerations by the eccentricities of the opposition. George Ollerenshaw was a tubby little man of fifty-eight who had not played any other game than golf to an acceptable standard. He attempted to make up for this omission by the seriousness he brought to the golf course in what we euphemistically call ‘middle age' – there was mercifully little chance that George Ollerenshaw would live to be a hundred and sixteen.

He was that irritating phenomenon with which all seasoned golfers are familiar: the man who has an excuse for every bad shot. Bert Hook, still relatively inexperienced in the game, had not met anyone like this before. In Bert's view, you approached a dead ball in your own time and hit it when you were ready. In this decadent game, you could not get a ball screaming towards your crotch at ninety miles an hour or a ridiculous lbw decision. Anything you did was patently your own fault and there could be no excuses.

George Ollerenshaw had a million excuses.

For a start, he never got a good lie, even in the middle of the fairway, though the wretchedness was never remarked upon until after he had mishit the ball. The most wretched of topped shots, the most extravagant slice, the complete foozle, were all explained in turn as the work of the malevolent devil who set down George's ball in the wickedest places.

Men take their sport seriously. It is one thing which distinguishes them from lower forms of life. Bert Hook was a legend for his equanimity when confronted with the most foul-mouthed and blasphemous of criminals. But he was outraged by Ollerenshaw's refusal to confront sporting reality. When the corpulent one slashed the ball extravagantly out of bounds on the sixth and claimed for the fourth time in the round that he had been in a divot hole, Bert could stand it no longer.

‘Golf,' he observed loudly to no one in particular but to the world at large, ‘is a game in which the ball invariably lies badly and the player lies well.'

There was an embarrassed silence, whilst Bert strode forward, Ollerenshaw stared at him in outrage, and the other two men in the game looked hard at the blue sky above them.

‘He's been studying for an Open University degree,' Lambert eventually said apologetically. ‘I expect he's been reading too much.'

Ollerenshaw was quiet for a while. But his trouble was endemic, and the disease surfaced again within three holes. He was affected by the mewing of a buzzard half a mile away, by the scarcely audible laughter of golfers three holes ahead, by the low sun in his eyes, by the first of the autumn leaves drifting across his vision as he addressed his ball. Lambert gave Hook a series of increasingly desperate warning glares.

When George dispatched his ball irretrievably into the middle of the pond from the twelfth tee, it gave Bert Hook immense but initially secret satisfaction. The man could surely claim nothing in mitigation this time. He had chosen his own perfect lie, had set the ball up carefully upon his tee-peg. Rank bad shot, Your Honour. Plead guilty and ask for mitigation on the grounds of incompetence.

Ollerenshaw studied the widening circle of ripples on the still, dark water. He picked up his tee-peg with a huge sigh. Then he said, ‘I should have stopped. The whiff of diesel from that tractor was quite overpowering.' He gestured with a wide sweep of his arm towards the farmer's fields on the left and the invisible and odourless machinery, then shook his head sadly and moved hopelessly towards his trolley.

Lambert commiserated hastily before Hook could express his outrage. ‘“The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”,' he called vaguely but sympathetically after the waddling back.

George turned a red and uncomprehending face.

‘
Hamlet
,' explained Lambert, desperately avoiding Hook beside him.

Light dawned upon Ollerenshaw. ‘The cigar advert,' he nodded.

Bert could be restrained no longer. ‘No. The tragic Dane. Contemplating suicide at the time.' It seemed to Bert like an excellent suggestion for George.

The light dawned. ‘Shakespeare. Never read it,' said George, as if that dismissed the matter for ever. Then, perhaps feeling a need to emphasize his erudition in the face of this humble plod, ‘Tragedy, I think. He gets killed at the end.'

Hook nodded. ‘Most people think death is a tragedy. But I can think of cases where it would be justifiable homicide.'

Lambert and Hook won handsomely. Lambert was wondering how to handle the after-match drinks when Rushton rang him with the news of Liza Allen's visit to the station. He seized eagerly upon the need to depart at once.

It seemed unlikely that George Ollerenshaw would ask them for a return match.

The man in black was nervous. He was pushing his team hard, because he was being pushed himself by Daniel Price.

But he wasn't happy. When you were breaking the law, you should proceed with caution, in his view. Grow the business slowly, but surely; make certain that each operative you put in place was working effectively before you went on to further expansion. There was a lot of money in this business, but there was danger as well: you should expect that when the profit was so huge. It paid you to be very, very careful.

Daniel Price didn't seem to appreciate that. He was trying to rake in the profits too quickly. Perhaps Price was himself being pushed by those above him. More likely he was simply greedy. But there was no one you could appeal to over his head. You simply didn't know who was next in line above him. The big boys, the barons who made their millions out of drugs, thrived on secrecy. No one knew anything about the chains of command above them, and most people only knew one person, their immediate superior and their contact with the supply chain.

The man in black felt very vulnerable.

He was doing things against his better judgement, which is always a danger sign. He knew that he should keep as low a profile as possible, be unseen but effective. You weren't selling the stuff yourself, so most of the time there was no need to be around. You only went to the clubs to recruit new staff or, very occasionally, to keep your existing staff up to the mark.

Yet on the night of Sunday, the fourth of October, he found himself going again to Shakers club in the town centre. He was like a mother hen, he thought, keeping his eye on his pushers, anxious to encourage, cajole, threaten them into increasing their sales. Bloody Daniel Price!

He was beginning to wish he had never recruited young Mark Lindsay. The lad wasn't reliable enough. He was naive. He was going to need constant supervision. But the man had needed someone to sell for him at Greenwood School: he had lost two pushers, a boy and a girl, who had moved out of the town when they left the sixth form. Young Lindsay had been both easily frightened and eager to make money. But that didn't make him a reliable pusher.

He'd have another look at Lindsay in action tonight. He might take the pressure off him a little, discourage him from taking silly risks. Or he might dispense with him altogether, whilst there was still time.

It was a clear night, but the moon wasn't yet up. The man in black found the blanket of darkness such a comfort that he almost turned away at the last moment. But that would have been silly, having come this far. He had to force himself to leave the night and go into the brightness of the club.

It took him quarter of an hour to be certain that Mark Lindsay wasn't there. He circled the floor, where the noise level was already high and the temperature was rising in parallel with testosterone levels. He checked among the groups of noisy young men at the bar, then in both of the men's toilets.

Nothing wrong with that, he told himself. Perhaps the lad was merely keeping a low profile, doing what he now planned to advise him to do. Somehow it didn't seem likely. After all, it was only yesterday that he had been pressurizing Lindsay to sell more, putting the frighteners on him a bit. He regretted that now, and more so when the lad wasn't here.

His mind was full of young Lindsay when he went out again into the car park and the anonymity of the night. Perhaps he wasn't as vigilant as he would normally have been. Certainly he never saw the man, though he must have tracked him for sixty yards.

The man in black was leaning against the side of his car with his keys in his hand, wondering where he should go from here, when he felt the hand on his shoulder. A voice said quietly, ‘Don't turn round. Raise your arms slowly and place them on the roof of your car with the palms downwards.'

There was pressure, steady but insistent, between his shoulder blades, until he felt his cheek pressed hard against the icy metal of his car. He felt his teeth chatter as he said, ‘My wallet's in my side pocket. You can have whatever money I've got. Just don't beat me up, there's no point!'

But he knew as he spoke that this wasn't a mugging. It was not as bad as that, and yet much worse. He wasn't going to be hit, wasn't going to have his face pulped, his bones broken. But this wasn't going to be the end of it. This was the beginning of something worse than a beating.

The voice said, ‘We don't want your money, sunshine. But thanks for inviting us to search your pockets.'

It was the first time he knew that there were two of them. And they did not conceal their satisfaction when they turned out the heroin, cocaine, and Ecstasy. He should never have brought them here. He should have kept to the usual points of supply. It was that bugger Price, pressurizing him to increase his turnover. And he couldn't even shop him, when he was taken in.

He scarcely heard the words of arrest. Despite the steel of the handcuffs pinioning his wrists, it still felt like a bad dream as he rode in the police car to the station.

It wasn't very late – only just past eleven – but it might have been the middle of the night. There seemed to be no one abroad on these minor roads on this autumn Sunday night. Jane Logan was glad of that.

It was safer at night than during the day on these narrow lanes, for headlights gave advance warning of any approaching vehicle. But after she had passed a couple of cyclists in the last environs of Cheltenham, the widow of the late headmaster drove for several miles without seeing another soul. It suited her that way. The thing in the plastic bag beneath her seat was not meant for strangers' eyes.

Her undipped headlamps caught the occasional flash of a familiar name on the old signposts: Deerhurst Walton, Lower Apperley, Bishop's Norton. She remembered the names from happier times in this ancient part of England. She could have used the River Chelt for her purposes, but she drove on towards the wider and deeper waters of the Severn, feeling obscurely that the country's longest river would afford her greater security.

She knew where she wanted to go, but it seemed to take her a long time to reach the old stone bridge with its triple arches. The parking bay was deserted, as she had known it must be at this hour. Earlier on this glorious autumn day, people would no doubt have parked here to walk by the river, glorying in the wide sweep of the Severn's bends beneath the majestic trees, with their first, full-leaved swathes of autumn colour.

She could hear those leaves rustling softly as she slid cautiously from the car. There was a bright crescent of moon now, as there had not been earlier in the evening for the man in black, and stars diamond-sharp against the navy sky. She could just hear the soft surge of the river beneath her from the topmost point of the bridge, and the white, pure light of the moon picked up the occasional ripple where stones were near the surface fifty yards lower down its course.

But beneath the shadow of the topmost part of the bridge, the river at its centre ran wide, invisible and deep. Jane Logan carried the plastic bag carefully, as if she feared that contact with its contents might in some way sully her. She paused for a moment by the keystone of the parapet, feeling her heart pounding, nerving herself for the simple act of disposal.

Then she took the bottom corners of the bag between firm fingers and upended it vigorously over the waters. Time appeared to elongate itself, so that it seemed to her several seconds before she heard the soft splash from far beneath her. She forced herself back to the car on legs which were suddenly reluctant to propel her. But she had to sit for a moment or two with her eyes shut, listening to the gradual slowing of her heartbeat, before she could turn the key in the ignition.

It was as quiet on her way home as it had been on the outward journey. She was into the outskirts of Cheltenham before she saw her first car, and there was only one light left on in her suburban avenue as she drove quietly along it and put the car into the garage.

It was almost midnight, but Jane Logan did not hesitate to pick up the phone. And the tone came only twice before the receiver was snatched up at the other end of the line. ‘It's gone!' was all she said.

T
amsin Phillips found that the CID men were waiting for her after morning assembly at Greenwood Comprehensive School. She felt an electric shock of fear when she was told that the tall superintendent and his dozy side-kick wanted to speak to her again, but she controlled it.

She didn't think she showed her emotions to the School Secretary when that middle-aged matron brought her the news. She knew that she must appear perfectly composed when she met the CID. She went quickly into the cloakroom and checked her appearance. She was reassured by what she saw. The short black hair was as neat around the oval face as she had known it would be. She examined the minimal make-up around the large dark eyes. They had always been her best feature, those eyes. They were framed for more exciting things than deceiving policemen, but they might have to work for that, if it came to the pinch.

By the time she strode into the room where they were waiting for her, she was confident about the picture she presented. They had been given Peter's old room for the interview. She'd seen some action, here. But she took care to look around curiously at her surroundings, as though the room was quite new to her. Excitement was good for her, she told herself. Hadn't she always thrived upon it? Couldn't she handle excitement better than anyone else she knew?