A Death at South Gare Read online

  They were waiting for me when I got back to Risky Point. The pickup that was becoming increasingly familiar was parked at my gate.

  I stopped, hesitated a moment and then got out. So did they. I recognized them. They were the three from the South Gare.

  ‘What do you want?’ I demanded.

  ‘Nothing, bonnie lad,’ the leader replied with a confident smile. ‘We just came by to see how you were getting on. Keeping in touch, you know.’

  Not local. He was a Geordie, by the sound of it.

  ‘You’re a long way from home,’ I pointed out.

  ‘We like to see how you folk in the country live.’

  ‘I hear you were in Redcar a little earlier, as well?’

  ‘Were we?’

  ‘Threatening a friend of mine.’

  He chuckled. ‘Oh, yes! Your lady friend. Nice, isn’t she? Nice house, as well. Be a pity if anything happens to her.’

  ‘Get out of here!’

  I was angry by then, seething in fact, but not yet mad enough to ignore the way the odds were stacked against me. I headed straight for my front door.

  ‘Hang on, Doy! We want to talk.’

  ‘One moment,’ I told him over my shoulder. ‘Don’t go away.’

  I went inside. When I came back out I was carrying a loaded shotgun.

  ‘Now, what do you want to talk about?’

  ‘No need for that,’ the leader said easily, not intimidated. ‘Why would you fetch a thing like that?’

  ‘Say what you’ve got to say, and then get out.’

  He looked me in the eye and nodded. ‘Be careful, Doy. That’s the message. Don’t do anything, or say anything, that could come back to cause you or your lady friend trouble.’

  ‘What did you have against Campbell?’ I asked. ‘That’s what’s been puzzling me.’

  ‘Forget him. Forget you were ever there – you’ve been told!’

  ‘Another question,’ I said. ‘Who are you working for?’

  That seemed to amuse them for some reason. All three smiled at that. The big guy looked at the others before turning back to me and shaking his head.

  ‘What are you like?’ he said wonderingly. ‘Questions, questions, questions!’

  ‘I’ve got plenty more, as well!’

  ‘Well, it’s been nice meeting you, Doy. We’ve enjoyed seeing where you live, out here in the beautiful countryside.’

  His tone changed as he added, ‘Just don’t make us come back again. Keep your mouth shut – and stay away from the cops!’

  He turned, and led the way back to their vehicle. It was a bit cleaner than it had been the first time I’d seen it. I could see the markings on the side now. It belonged to a hire company.

  Chapter Eleven

  The man in the suit said to his boss, ‘It’s worrying.’

  ‘You worry too much!’

  ‘Maybe so, but I think we should call those other guys back.’

  ‘I thought you had men on it?’

  ‘I do, but. . . .’

  ‘They’re not good enough?’

  The man in the suit shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe not. There’s the girl, as well, remember?’

  His boss grimaced and admitted, ‘I worry about her, too. She’s a real loose cannon.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, but suddenly we seem to have a lot of loose ends.’

  The boss hesitated, thought about it and then said, ‘You’re right. We’ll call them back if we have to, but let’s just carry on as we are for a bit longer.’

  ‘We haven’t got a lot of time, remember?’

  ‘Give it a bit longer. Pressure can work wonders, if you give it a chance.’

  Chapter Twelve

  I tried to put all the nonsense aside and concentrate on work. Jac had taken herself out of the picture. So I didn’t need to worry about her. And I certainly wasn’t going to spend time worrying about three ugly Geordies who were dangerous enough but not very smart. I phoned Bill Peart to tell him about my encounter with them. I also gave him the name of the hire company that owned the truck.

  ‘A Tyneside company, eh?’

  ‘Presumably. It was a 0191 number, anyway.’

  ‘We’ll get on it. You OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘And Jac?’

  ‘She’s taking a holiday, Bill. She’s well out of it. There’s no need for her to put up with crap like this.’

  ‘Quite right, too. We’ll find them,’ he assured me.

  ‘I hope you do. You’ll not solve James Campbell’s murder without them.’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Bill said, ‘we’ll keep an eye on Jac’s house.’

  Back to work. PortPlus. I needed to know more about them. Correction: I needed to know something about them. All I knew so far was what I had heard from Mike Rogers, and that wasn’t enough. Apart from anything else, before I did any work for them I needed to know if they could pay me. It’s always worth checking. I’ve found that the hard way.

  Googling didn’t produce much. But names sometimes don’t mean much these days. They can be instant creations without any substance behind them. Just names. What you need to know is what organization spawned them, or whose is the money behind them.

  The PortPlus people, for all I knew, could have a five per cent holding in one port, twenty per cent in another, and thirty per cent in something else. They didn’t have to own anything outright. Also, theirs didn’t have to be the name up there in lights.

  Still. . . . After half an hour I began to wonder what PortPlus was. I couldn’t find anything about them. It was beginning to be worrying.

  A thunderous knocking on the door told me my neighbour, Jimmy Mack, had come to distract me. I gave up on the computer search and switched on the kettle instead.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ he asked suspiciously when I opened the door.

  ‘Me? Nothing. Why?’

  I let him inside and he seized the best of the kitchen chairs, the only one that doesn’t creak and threaten to fall apart when you sit on it.

  ‘Coffee, Jim?’

  He nodded. ‘You haven’t been around much lately?’

  ‘No. I’ve been busy.’

  ‘You won’t have heard the news, then?’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘One of them politicians fell off the breakwater at the South Gare and drowned himself. Supposedly.’

  Jimmy gave me a speculative look.

  ‘I did know that, actually,’ I admitted. ‘So they’ve released the story, have they?’

  He nodded, and looked satisfied to have wrung the admission out of me.

  ‘Your mate Bill Peart was on the television, talking about it. He didn’t say an awful lot, mind, as usual.’

  Bill was a pretty frequent visitor to Risky Point and my cranky old fisherman neighbour knew him well enough.

  ‘So what’s your problem with that?’ I asked as I made the coffee.

  Jimmy chuckled sarcastically and shook his head. ‘It doesn’t make sense, does it? A man like that, a politician, going to the end of the breakwater at the height of a spring tide?’

  ‘Maybe he wanted to see the full glory of the sea in all its majesty – or something?’

  ‘With no cameras there? A politician?’

  He was quite astute, old Jimmy, as well as cynical.

  ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘I’d have thought he was too busy. He’s the one that’s been making so much fuss about everything – geese, seals, wind turbines, the Redcar steelworks, unemployment. . . . There’s no end to his protests and campaigns – all for good causes, though. I’ll give him that.’

  I had to smile. Jim had summed him up pretty well.

  ‘So what do you think happened to him?’

  He looked at me sternly and shook his head. ‘All I know is he didn’t fall off the breakwater, not all by himself he didn’t.’

  I realized then that I had to tell him something. Living next to me, and with no other neighbours for a couple of miles, he would b
e vulnerable if the Geordies, and the mystery caller behind them, decided to make good on their threats and promises.

  ‘You’re not wrong, Jim.’

  ‘Ah!’

  Again, he looked satisfied with himself.

  ‘He was shot first, apparently. Bill Peart told me – in confidence. They didn’t want that information to go public just yet, though.’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘When I saw Bill on the telly, I wondered where you came in. You had to be involved somehow.’

  ‘Unfortunately, I found the body. At least, I was the one who saw the body in the water and alerted the police.’ I hesitated and then added, ‘There were three blokes nearby who I suspected had put him there. I’m telling you this, Jim, because a threatening message was left on my phone, warning me to keep out of it. I’ve also had callers at my door bringing the same message. So has Jac.

  ‘So keep your eyes open. Watch out for yourself – but don’t get involved! I’ve told Jac that, as well. I don’t want either of you in harm’s way.’

  He slurped his coffee and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, seeing the look of anguish on his face.

  ‘Is there any sugar at all in this?’

  I dived into a cupboard and pulled out a few sachets I’d picked up somewhere and kept for the likes of Jimmy.

  ‘Anything else?’ I demanded.

  Patiently, he tore open one sachet after another, emptying the contents into his mug.

  ‘Just one thing,’ he said steadily. ‘What were you doing there, at the South Gare, when he fell in the water?’

  ‘I’ve asked myself that same question.’

  ‘I mean, it’s not as if you’re short of trouble, is it?’

  I shook my head. He wasn’t wrong about that.

  Chapter Thirteen

  She brought the kayak ashore at last. It had been a longer and more tiring journey than she had expected, and she was stiff and drained from the unaccustomed exercise. The mental strain had been considerable, too, especially as darkness had descended.

  First, she’d had to find a way round the Tees Barrage, which had meant leaving the water and hauling and carrying the kayak until she was clear. Then, in the lower reaches of the river, there had been big ships to avoid, as well as launches and cutters, fishing boats and oil industry vessels. None of them could have noticed her. She’d had to be watchful, and sometimes take evasive action, to keep herself out of harm’s way. No, not an easy journey at all.

  Somehow she’d made it, and here she was at the mouth of the river. She climbed gingerly out of the kayak and into water that reached over her knees. Then she stood still and glanced round cautiously, but it was dark and there was nobody to see her. She stooped, took hold of the fragile craft and hauled it up onto a bank of shingle. Then she spent a few minutes stretching to work the stiffness out of her limbs.

  Nearly home! she thought with satisfaction as she straightened up. And there was no way they could have followed her. She was safe at last.

  She studied the kayak, wondering what to do about it. Her first inclination was to sink it and get rid of it. But it wasn’t hers, and anyway who could tell when it might come in useful again? So she dragged it up the bank and into a clump of elder bushes. That done, she set off to run the last little way through the dunes, exhausted but relieved and happy to be safely back home.

  Later, recovering, she reflected on how difficult it was now she was alone. He had warned her it would be, but back then she hadn’t taken much notice. She had been so happy with what he was giving her. Besides, she couldn’t believe that either of them could possibly come to harm. Now she needed to come to terms with how wrong she had been.

  It wasn’t over yet either, she thought moodily. Far from it. It was getting worse by the day. They were hunting her. She knew that for sure now. They couldn’t just let her be. She wished bitterly that she had never gone to confront them, although that might not have saved her. She knew too much.

  And she was alone now, she reminded herself again. There was just her. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to manage – it would prove too much for her? It was quite possible.

  Oh, if only she had a partner! She really needed someone to shoulder some of the burden.

  Fat chance of that, of course. She would just have to do it alone. And she would, too. There was no choice. She wanted to make him proud of her, wherever he was now.

  She sniffed away a tear and blew out the candle. Then, wearily, she lay down. She had done enough for one day.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Although I needed to get to grips with scoping the job for PortPlus, Jimmy Mack’s visit had unsettled me. Once again, I was wondering what I had stumbled into at the South Gare. Who was behind the three men who had terrified Jac, and come to lean on me? Who was pulling the strings? And why had a serving Member of Parliament been murdered anyway?

  I knew what Bill Peart would have said: Keep out of it! Leave it to us. That’s what we’re paid to do, answer questions like that.

  As Jimmy had pointed out, though, I was involved, and had been almost from the start. So I couldn’t leave it alone. The threats made to me and to Jac had had the effect of interesting me more than ever, not putting me off. Without them, I might just have got on with my own business, and left Bill Peart to deal with his. As it was, I couldn’t let go.

  It had all started with James Campbell. Someone had taken exception to him, or to what he was doing. Of all the things he had been involved with, what was it that had made him so insufferable that he had to be eliminated?

  The next morning I decided to contact the constituency office of the Labour Party, thinking Campbell’s agent might have an idea of what it was all about. I had got his name from a piece in the local paper about the recent elections.

  The woman that answered the phone said they were too busy to talk. In any case, she added, there was no-one there on such a sad day. It seemed a bit of a contradiction, but I let it go. Probably they were all stunned and uncertain what to do with themselves.

  I visited them anyway. When I got there, nobody was busy. There were just three or four people sitting around drinking coffee and looking miserable.

  ‘Jack Gregory?’ I asked.

  A middle-aged woman in jeans and a washed-out Michael Jackson T-shirt looked up and said, ‘Sorry. He’s not available. What do you want?’

  It was a bad time to be calling, but it was a bad time for me as well as for them. So I just said, ‘I want to talk about James Campbell.’

  ‘We’re all too busy,’ the woman said, shaking her head. ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t be dealing with you today.’

  A middle-aged man in a well-worn, charcoal-grey suit looked at me dolefully but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Shut the door on your way out,’ a feisty young woman wearing a duffle coat said.

  Finally, the other member of the group came to life. A young guy in jeans and sweater, he stood up and said, ‘I’m Jack Gregory. Come on through.’

  He turned and led the way out of the front office to his retreat at the end of a corridor.

  ‘Don’t mind that lot,’ he said wearily over his shoulder. ‘We’re all pretty down today.’

  ‘I understand.’

  He was maybe thirty, or so, and seemed full of energy even on a day like that. I judged he was glad to have a break from the wake they were holding in the front office.

  ‘Frank Doy,’ I told him once we were sat down. ‘I won’t piss you about, Jack. I’m aware of what’s happened, and I can see how upset everyone is. I’m a private investigator and security consultant. But I don’t mean to be insensitive, and I’ll not take up much of your time.’

  ‘Time is what we have at the moment,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Our world has come to a stop. What do you want to know?’

  ‘I would like to find out what local issues James was working on. A potential inward investor has asked me to produce an overview of what’s happening in the area,
and this seemed a good place to start. I hoped you might be able to brief me on how James saw the problems and opportunities in his constituency.’

  Gregory developed a frown and a slight flush. Anger seemed to be bubbling to the surface.

  ‘At a time like this?’ he said. ‘And you don’t want to be insensitive?’

  I decided to take a gamble. It was either that or get thrown out.

  ‘Ask me why it matters – to me, personally,’ I said.

  He stared hard for a moment and then said, ‘Go on – why?’

  ‘I was the one who found his body.’

  That shut him up.

  ‘At least,’ I added, ‘I was the one who saw him in the sea and called the police.’

  He sucked in his breath. ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I shook my head. ‘It was pure coincidence. I just happened to be visiting the South Gare that afternoon. When I got there, it can’t have been long after he’d gone into the sea.’

  ‘And you had nothing to do with it, I take it?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Expect me to believe that?’

  He was on guard and feisty. Sick to the stomach and mad as hell, probably. And now I’d arrived with what probably sounded like a fantasy tale.

  ‘Tell you what, Jack. I’m a personal friend of DI Bill Peart who is investigating this case. I’ll give you his direct line. You can ring him and get him to confirm what I’ve just told you. That good enough?’

  It took a few moments. Then he nodded and said, ‘OK. I know Peart. He’s a good man. I’ll take your word for it. Do you want a coffee, by the way?’

  ‘That would be good.’

  ‘On second thoughts,’ he added, glancing at the clock on the wall, ‘Let’s go and have a drink. I’m bloody sick of this place already today.’

  We went to the White Swan just round the corner. It wasn’t a pub I frequented, although it had always been there.

  ‘Very retro,’ I suggested, looking round at the plastic-covered bench seats and the formica tables, along with walls thick with layers of cream emulsion on top of woodchip wallpaper.

  ‘Yeah.’ He looked round himself and nodded with satisfaction. ‘Circa 1959, would you say?’

  ‘Even earlier. Mid-fifties, I would guess.’