Dead End Read online

  The four men exchanged looks.

  ‘What about him?’ Roy Moores said, pointing to Archie Eccleston.

  ‘I’ll take care of him,’ Sutton promised. ‘Don’t you worry about that. I’ll treat him better than I treat Patch, my old cocker spaniel. Now go on, be off with you, before I feel obliged to take my little truncheon out of its harness and give you all a tiny tap on the noggin.’

  It was not a threat that any of the men took seriously, but they could see that he was right, and their battle had been all-but over the moment the bulldozer turned up. So their choice, as they saw it, was to stay and possibly get into trouble, or to sink a few beers in the pub. It really wasn’t much of a quandary, and after each of them had given Archie Eccleston an encouraging tap on the shoulder, they left.

  The two constables moved over to the double gates, stood one each side of Eccleston, and examined the chains which were binding him to the gate posts.

  ‘How many chains have you actually got wrapped around you?’ Jeff Sutton asked.

  ‘Just the one,’ Eccleston replied.

  ‘It must be a bloody long chain,’ the policeman said.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘It must be heavy, too. I imagine it’s exhausting, carrying all that extra weight.’

  For a moment, it looked as if Eccleston might shrug, but he was already physically and emotionally exhausted, so he contented himself with saying, ‘I’m managing.’

  ‘What about them padlocks? They look right heavy duty, too.’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘And do you have the keys on you?’

  ‘Do I look bloody daft?’ Eccleston wondered. ‘Because I’d have to be an idiot to have the keys on me, now wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Are you willing to tell us where the keys are?’

  ‘Yes.’ Eccleston said, and then fell silent again.

  ‘So where are they?’ Jeff Sutton asked, after perhaps half a minute had passed.

  ‘They’re at the bottom of the river.’

  ‘If we can get this over with quickly, you can just bugger off,’ Jeff Sutton said, ‘but if you make things difficult, I’ll have no choice but to arrest you for obstruction. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I do want,’ Eccleston said.

  ‘What do you mean, lad?’

  ‘I want you to arrest me. I want my day in court.’

  Jeff Sutton cleared his throat. ‘Very well, if that is what you wish, will you tell me your full name, sir,’ he said.

  ‘You already know my name,’ Eccleston said. ‘Or at least, you should do, because we’ve been playing on the same darts team for at least five years.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter, Arch … sir,’ the constable said. ‘If we’re going to do this, it has to be done officially.’

  ‘All right,’ Eccleston said. ‘Why don’t you ask me again?’

  ‘What’s your name, sir?’ the constable asked.

  ‘None of your bloody business,’ Eccleston told him. ‘Bugger off!’

  ‘You’re just trying to make this as difficult for me as you possibly can, aren’t you?’ the constable asked.

  The look of aggression drained away from Eccleston’s face, and was replaced by something closely resembling guilt.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jeff,’ he said. ‘I know I shouldn’t take my anger out on you, but that allotment means a great deal to me. Ever since Patrick died …’

  ‘I know, lad, I know,’ Jeff Sutton said.

  The padlocks were thick, but the bolt cutters were heavy duty and the two constables had the sort of beefy, rugby-playing strength which was required to use them to maximum advantage, so it was not long before the locks fell to the ground.

  ‘Right then, let’s get this chain off you,’ Jeff Sutton said.

  Eccleston had wrapped the chain tightly around him, and there were already long blue bruises forming on his forearm.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Eccleston said, noticing that the constables had seen them. ‘Nothing really matters anymore.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Archie,’ Sutton said. ‘Look, you don’t really want your day in court, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Eccleston admitted. ‘I thought I did, but now I think that all I really want is a good sleep.’

  Sutton glanced around him. The other allotment holders were still arguing at the roadblock, and now they had been joined by reporters from the various Whitebridge and district newspapers, who were after what – in local terms – would probably turn out to be the story of the month.

  ‘Look, they’re all busy and I don’t think anybody will notice if we run you home,’ he said.

  ‘I’m just so tired,’ Archie Eccleston said, with the faintest of nods.

  Louisa wondered whether she had videoed all she needed to, or if Inspector Metcalfe would require more. Working on the theory that it was better to be safe than sorry, she decided to keep on filming.

  It was about twenty yards from the gate to Constable Sutton’s car, and by the time the two policemen and allotment holder had covered half that distance, three things happened which combined together to completely derail the no-fuss ending to the incident that Sutton had been working towards.

  The first of these was that another officer had opened the double gates to the allotment. The second was when the bulldozer driver, seeing that his way was clear and already (for obvious reasons) running behind schedule, did not wait for his foreman’s instructions, but instead started up his machine and headed for the opening.

  Archie Eccleston noticed these two things, and had a sudden thought.

  ‘I’ve got to go back,’ he said in a panic. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

  Jeff Sutton would have been inclined to let him, but that was when the third thing happened.

  This third thing in the unfortunate trio of events was the re-emergence of Inspector Metcalfe.

  ‘Why isn’t that man in handcuffs?’ he demanded, pointing at Archie Eccleston. ‘He’s already cost the council hundreds of pounds in delays and police overtime, and I want him arrested.’

  ‘Sorry, Archie, but this is the way it has to be,’ Sutton said, reaching for his cuffs with one hand and taking Eccleston’s arm with the other.

  ‘But I have to go back,’ Eccleston said desperately, as he saw the bulldozer pass through the gates.

  ‘I’ve been very fair with you, so don’t you go making me look bad in front of my boss,’ Sutton said, clamping one link of the handcuff on Eccleston’s right wrist.

  ‘Got to go,’ Eccleston screamed. ‘Got to go.’

  And breaking free of Sutton’s grip, he rushed back towards the gates.

  If Louisa hadn’t been looking through the viewfinder of the video camera, she might have realized what was happening a split second earlier, and avoided the collision, and if Eccleston hadn’t been looking over his shoulder, he might have done the same.

  As it was, Eccleston smashed into Louisa at full force, and they both went down.

  For a moment or two, they lay in a confused heap – and then they quickly began to untangle from each other.

  ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry,’ Eccleston groaned. ‘You’re not really hurt, are you? Please tell me you’re not really hurt.’

  But by the time Louisa had found the breath to answer him, he’d already been dragged away by a very angry PC Sutton.

  The landlord of the Drum and Monkey had grown used to hardened drinkers knocking on the door of the public bar in the hour or so before the official opening time, with the specific aim of begging him to break the rules – not to mention the law! – just this once.

  ‘If I could just come in and have a quick pint …’ was a line which often greeted him when he opened the door.

  ‘Sorry,’ he would invariably reply.

  ‘Of maybe just a half – with a whisky chaser …’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Be reasonable, Harry, my throat feels as scratchy as the bottom of a par
rot’s cage.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  The knocking this morning sounded slightly different to that of the usual supplicants, for though there was always a desperation behind the knocks of those early morning dipsomaniacs, there was also an implicit awareness that if they knocked too loudly, they might piss the landlord off, and the one in a million chance that he might, for once, relent, would be gone.

  The man hammering on the door now had no such scruples. His knock proclaimed that he was the one who laid down the rules, and people like the landlord had no other function in life but to jump to it and serve him.

  Well, we’ll soon see about that, Harry Flynn thought, flinging the door between the public bar and the street open.

  But instead of there being one of the usual deadbeats – red-eyed, blue-chinned, scuffed shoes – there was a man with ice blue eyes, a well-harvested chin and shoes which almost dazzled. And to top it all, he was wearing a bowler hat and carrying a briefcase.

  ‘I’m Hereward Montague from Her Majesty’s Department of Trade and Commerce (Retail Section),’ he said, holding out a small leather wallet similar to the ones in which policeman kept their warrant cards.

  ‘Oh,’ Harry said.

  ‘Well, look at it,’ Montague snapped. ‘Examine it carefully.’

  Harry Flynn did as he’d been told. Yes, the warrant confirmed, this was Hereward Montague, and yes, he did appear to work for Her Majesty’s Department of Trade and Commerce.

  ‘I’m here to do a random inspection,’ Montague said.

  ‘A random inspection?’ the landlord repeated. ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of whatever I choose to inspect,’ Montague said.

  He took an unsignalled step forward, and in order to avoid a collision, Harry Flynn was forced to retreat into the pub.

  Montague looked around him. ‘You and your wife live upstairs, don’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ Flynn told him.

  But he had a strange feeling that Montague already knew the answer.

  ‘And is your wife in?’

  ‘No, at this time of day she usually slips out to do a little shopping.’

  And Flynn got the distinct impression that Montague knew that, too.

  ‘You stay here,’ Montague said. ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘I’ll come with you and show you where …’

  ‘You’ll stay here.’ Flynn said firmly.

  The landlord heard the other man climb the stairs, and registered his footfalls as he inspected the living quarters. He was up there for ten minutes, and when he came down again, he inspected the lounge, the saloon bar and the toilets. When Montague returned to the public bar, he was looking grim.

  ‘Well?’ Harry Flynn asked anxiously.

  ‘I’ve still got this bar to inspect,’ Montague told him.

  The inspector walked around the room, occasionally tapping the wall with his knuckles. Twice, he went to one of the corners and took some kind of instrument out of his pocket. The first time, the instrument beeped. The second time, it didn’t.

  The inspection finally over, Montague shook his head sadly from side to side.

  ‘There’s a lot needs to be done to bring this place up to standard,’ he said. ‘It’s going to cost the brewery thousands. Still, the amount of money they’re making, they won’t even notice.’

  ‘The brewery … the brewery doesn’t own this pub,’ the landlord spluttered.

  ‘Oh, then who does?’

  ‘Me. I bought it off them last year.’

  ‘Well, they certainly must have seen you coming,’ Montague said – and laughed. ‘Talk about buying a leaking ship in the middle of the ocean!’

  ‘I … I can’t afford to spend thousands on repairs, not with the mortgage repayments and everything,’ Flynn confessed.

  A look of concern – which was both surprising and unexpected – came to Montague’s face.

  ‘My father ran his own pub,’ he said. ‘That’s basically how I got into this line of work. And if there’s one thing that makes me angry, it’s the way everyone exploits the hard-working landlord.’ He paused for a second, as if he were thinking. ‘Look,’ he continued, ‘the changes I see as necessary will have to be made – there’s no way round that – but I could draw up a schedule of rolling improvements, so you make a few improvements now and a few more when you can afford it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Harry Flynn said.

  ‘But I will need a token gesture to show good faith,’ Montague said. He looked around him. ‘Now what could it be?’ he mused. ‘I’ve got it – you could put a lamp bracket over that table in the corner.’

  The table that he was pointing to had played a special part in the history of the Drum and Monkey, and, indeed, the history of serious crime in Whitebridge. It had been at that table that DCI Charlie Woodend had gathered his team together during some of his most important cases. And, once he had retired, it had been where DCI Paniatowski (Woodend’s protégé) had worked with her team.

  Regulars in the pub had developed a semi-proprietorial feeling for the table. Over the years, they had watched the detectives at work and then read about the arrests and trials in the newspapers, and it had begun to feel almost as if they had played a part themselves. And in a way, they had contributed, because though there was no reserved sign on the table, they made sure (by hint or innuendo – and when that failed by addressing the would-be encroachees in plain blunt Anglo-Saxon) that no one else used the table.

  The landlord looked at the table. ‘It doesn’t seem particularly in the shadows,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it is,’ Montague told him. ‘You saw me measure it with my light meter, didn’t you? And you must have heard it beep. That was because it detected a point seven five deficit.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do, exactly?’ Flynn asked.

  ‘As I said, I want a wall light installed just above the table,’ Montague told him.

  ‘I’ll get my usual electrician in,’ the landlord said.

  ‘This morning?’ Montague asked.

  Harry Flynn shook his head. ‘He was in here last night, and he said he’ll be away for a couple of days on a big job.’

  ‘So you’re talking about three days?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘I’ll need to inspect the work, and that can’t wait for three days, because by then I’ll be doing an inspection in Kent,’ Montague said.

  ‘Then I don’t see …’

  ‘So what we’ll do is, we’ll use my electrician, who always travels around with me.’

  So that was what this had all been leading up to, Harry Flynn thought in disgust. All these stiff visiting cards, and talk of government regulations and light meters – all the sympathy because his own dad had run a pub – was leading to nothing more than a sordid little shakedown.

  He could see now how it would pan out. The electrician would charge him much more than the work called for, and would split his haul with high-and-mighty Montague.

  Flynn considered what his next move should be. As a first step, he could refuse to pay up. As a second, he could report Montague to the police and then, as his third – his coup de grace – he could take the Department of Trade and Commerce to court. But though he had friends in the force, Montague probably had some higher up the ladder. And a court action would be so lengthy and expensive that even if he won, he would have lost.

  Far better, then, to bite on the bullet and give the corrupt bastard what he wanted.

  ‘So how much will this cost?’ he asked.

  The question seemed to puzzle Montague. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Pricing this kind of work does not come within my area of expertise.’

  Oh please, please, don’t be too greedy, Mr Montague, the landlord thought. Please ask for only a little more than I can afford.

  ‘Couldn’t you even make a rough estimate?’ he asked.

  ‘How much would you normally expect to pay?’ Montague wondered.

  ‘Fifteen quid
?’ the landlord said hopefully.

  Montague smiled. ‘Then give my man ten pounds – and a pint of bitter for the goodwill – and we’ll call it dead,’ he said.

  He turned and walked towards the door.

  ‘I’ll get that schedule of repairs to you some time in the next month,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ll agree with me that the light will be an improvement.’

  Then he tipped his bowler hat in lieu of saying goodbye, and was gone.

  Running the previous half hour through his mind, Harry Flynn found it impossible to pinpoint the moment at which Montague had changed. But changed he undoubtedly had – from a snarling tower of disapproval when he arrived to someone almost resembling a mate when he left.

  The electrician turned up half an hour later. The landlord was surprised when not only was there no indication that he worked for the government on his overalls, but (quite the reverse) he had ‘Harrison Electrical – the Expert Touch’ embroidered over his top pocket.

  ‘We’re subcontractors,’ he said, when he saw Flynn looking at it.

  ‘Oh,’ the landlord said, ‘Mr Montague gave the impression that you were on his staff.’

  The young man grinned. ‘He does that. Makes him feel a bit more important than he is. There’s no harm in it.’

  When he’d finished off the job, he accepted the ten pounds that Flynn offered, but insisted on paying for his own drink.

  ‘I was very impressed with that young man,’ Harry Flynn told his first customer of the day, ten minutes later. ‘Very impressed indeed.’

  There were two men sitting in the van parked just up the road from the Drum and Monkey. One was wearing overalls with the words ‘Harrison Electrical – the Expert Touch’ embroidered over his top pocket. The other was dressed in baggy trousers and a shapeless pullover, and though neither of the articles had the word ‘geek’ printed on them, they might as well have had.

  It was the geek who was playing with all the dials and buttons on the control panel.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Playback.’

  ‘We’re subcontractors.’