Death of a Cave Dweller Read online

“Might I ask why, sir? They’re not likely to have murdered him now, are they?”

  Woodend sighed. How could he ever hope to explain the way he worked to this stolid, unimaginative bobby?

  “I want to understand the dead lad better,” he said. “I want to find out what made him tick.”

  “I see,” Hopgood said – though it was plain that he didn’t. “Shall I come with you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Woodend said. “I prefer to be alone when I’m dealin’ with grievin’ parents.”

  “Please yourself, sir.”

  Hopgood tapped on the window of the Humber, and beckoned. The door opened, and a tall, thin constable with sandy hair got out.

  “This is Constable Bates,” Hopgood said. “He’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

  “Right then, Bates, let’s get started,” Woodend said.

  The constable moved smartly round to the back of the car, and opened the door.

  “You’ve got long arms, son, but I think even you’ll have trouble drivin’ from the back seat,” Woodend said.

  “I . . . er . . . thought you’d want to sit in the back, sir,” Bates said. “Most senior officers do.”

  “Nay, lad, I’ll ride in the front with you – like a real grown-up,” Woodend told him.

  He heard Hopgood’s loud snort, and realised he had just managed to offend the inspector’s sense of what was right and proper again. Well, stuff the officious bugger.

  Liverpool was nothing like the size of London, and the police Humber had soon left the city centre and was heading out into the suburbs. Woodend watched a seemingly endless stream of semi-detached houses fly past the window, each with its own small, but tidy front garden.

  The men who owned these houses were probably train drivers and electricians, plumbers and assistant shop managers – fellers who had, in all likelihood, been brought up in back-to-back terraced houses and were probably immensely proud of what they’d managed to provide for their own families. And why the bloody hell shouldn’t they be proud? Woodend asked himself.

  Constable Bates slowed, and finally came to a halt in front of one of the semis. “This is the place, sir,” he said.

  Woodend sighed. This was a part of the job which, however often he did it, he’d never been quite able to come to terms with.

  “Did somebody think to ring the parents up to tell them that I was makin’ a visit?” he asked.

  “They haven’t got a phone, sir,” the constable replied.

  No, of course they wouldn’t have a phone, Woodend thought. Nobody on this estate would have a phone – unless their jobs required it.

  “So I’ll be goin’ in cold, will I?” he asked.

  “Oh no, sir,” the driver replied. “I got one of our fellers to pop round on his beat an’ say you’d be comin’.”

  Woodend smiled gratefully. “Good lad,” he said. “I expect your boss has told you to stick to me like glue, hasn’t he?”

  Constable Bates coloured slightly. “I was . . . er . . . told to offer you all possible assistance, sir.”

  Woodend chuckled. “You’re wasted in the police force, son. The diplomatic service is the place for you. Does this ‘all possible assistance’ include comin’ into the house with me?”

  “Not as far as I know, sir. I think that I’m just expected to wait outside for you.”

  “I’m not familiar with this area, but I imagine there must be a cafe somewhere near here,” Woodend mused.

  “There is, sir. A bloody good one.”

  “Hmm,” Woodend said. “I expect to be in that house for half an hour. Now we both know you’re not supposed to go away, but we also both know that if you did, I’d be unlikely to find out about it.”

  The driver smiled. “Thanks, sir.”

  “What for?” Woodend asked innocently.

  He made his way up a crazy-paving path bordered with flowers, and lifted the highly polished brass knocker on the front door. The man who answered his knock was probably around forty-five years old, but he looked considerably older.

  “You’ll be that detective from London,” the man said.

  “That’s right, Mr Barnes,” Woodend agreed.

  “You’d better come in then.”

  A woman was hovering in the hallway. As with her husband, the strain of the recent days clearly showed in the lines on her face, but she did her best to look welcoming as she introduced herself.

  The grieving parents took Woodend into a front parlour which was probably only ever used for entertaining guests.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” Mrs Barnes asked.

  “That’s most kind of you,” Woodend told her, more because he knew it would help to put her at ease than because he actually wanted a drink.

  Mrs Barnes disappeared through the door, and after a few awkward seconds, her husband muttered something about helping her, and excused himself.

  Left to his own devices, the chief inspector examined the room. The fitted carpet was patterned with red and yellow swirls. There was a piano up against the wall which faced the window, and a fan made of wallpaper in the empty fireplace. Large plaster spaniels gazed at him from the hearth, and souvenir ornaments from Blackpool stood proudly on the mantelpiece. Three plaster ducks of differing sizes – and in full flight – occupied one part of wall opposite the fireplace, and a stylised, sentimental print of a small child with huge eyes filled much of the rest. The place reminded Woodend of his own front room.

  The couple returned, Mr Barnes carrying the tea tray, as if he doubted his wife’s ability to lift it.

  “Do sit down. Please,” he said, as he laid the tray carefully down on the coffee table.

  Woodend lowered himself into one of the imitation-leather armchairs, and Mr Barnes plopped down heavily on the sofa opposite him. The tension in the room was so thick it could have been cut up and used to make bricks.

  Mrs Barnes bent down over the coffee table. “Milk and sugar?” she asked Woodend.

  “Yes, please,” the chief inspector replied. “I’m sorry about your son. I’ve got a kid of my own, not that much younger than your Eddie was, an’ if anythin’ happened to her, I don’t know what I’d do.” He paused. “But I’d like to think that if I did lose her, I could handle the situation with the same courage you’re showin’.”

  Mrs Barnes nodded gratefully. “Eddie worked so hard at that guitar of his,” she said, as she ladled the sugar into Woodend’s cup. “Hours an’ hours he’d be up in his room, practisin’. Sometimes he’d get so frustrated he was almost in tears, but he’d never ever think about givin’ up.”

  “He was a real tryer,” Mr Barnes said solemnly. “Always had been. I remember when he was just a little kid an’ he had these buildin’ blocks. Every time he tried to build a wall with them, they’d tumble over, but he kept at it till he’d got what he wanted.”

  “Would you like to see a picture of him?” Mrs Barnes asked, as she handed Woodend his tea.

  “Aye, I would.”

  Mrs Barnes went over to the sideboard, and returned with a photograph in a silver frame. Woodend took it in his free hand, and examined it. Two young men were standing side by side in front of the Mersey ferry, their arms over each other’s shoulders. Woodend immediately recognised one as Steve Walker; the other had to be the dead guitarist.

  Eddie Barnes had been a thin young man, with pale, intense features and eyes almost as large as those of the child in the picture on the wall. A sensitive kid, Woodend guessed – a kid with a big heart.

  The chief inspector felt himself in the grip of a familiar sensation – one he always tried to resist, despite acknowledging the fact that it made him a better policeman. He was starting to get personally involved.

  He handed the photograph back to Mrs Barnes. “Tell me about Eddie’s relationship with Steve Walker,” he said.

  The woman sat down on the sofa next to her husband. She was holding the photograph tightly, as if she were afraid it would slip out of her fingers. A sad smile ca
me to her face. “Eddie an’ Steve were best mates.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Woodend said, returning her smile. “I never met your son, but I have recently met Steve Walker, an’ I find it hard to picture them gettin’ on. Seems to me they were as different as chalk an’ cheese.”

  “A lot of people have got Steve all wrong,” Mrs Barnes told him. “They say he’s a hard case, an’ . . . well, I suppose it’s true he’s been in a few fights in his time. But deep down, he’s as gentle as a lamb.”

  “You’re obviously very fond of him.”

  “He’s two years older than our Eddie is . . .” Mrs Barnes gulped. “Than our Eddie was. By rights, they shouldn’t have been mates at all, but they were. Eddie’s . . . Eddie was always a bit of a gentle soul, you see, an’ you know how other kids react to that. He didn’t have things easy in the primary school, but he was bullied somethin’ terrible durin’ his first couple of weeks at the secondary. Then Steve stepped in, an’ the bullyin’ stopped.”

  “We were grateful for what he did for our Eddie,” Mr Barnes said, “but that isn’t the only reason we’re fond of him.”

  “You’re quite right, Father,” his wife agreed. “Like I said before, there are hidden depths to Steve.”

  “Did you see quite a lot of him?” Woodend asked.

  “He was always round here, wasn’t he?” Mrs Barnes replied. “To tell you the truth . . . well, I don’t want to gossip, but I don’t think he’s had a very happy home life.”

  “In what way?”

  “His dad’s a drunken brute, by all accounts,” Mr Barnes said. “When he was younger, Steve used to have bruises which I’m sure didn’t come from fightin’ with other kids.”

  “An’ as for that mother of his, you could see she couldn’t be bothered to turn him out properly in the mornin’,” his wife added. “I doubt if he knows the meanin’ of the words ‘hot breakfast’.”

  “We’d never have let Eddie go to Hamburg if Steve hadn’t been goin’ too,” Mr Barnes told Woodend.

  “Indeed we wouldn’t,” his wife concurred. “But we knew that Steve wouldn’t let any harm come to him. He was more like a big brother than a friend.”

  Which was pretty much what Ron Clarke had said, Woodend thought.

  “Did Eddie have any other friends?” he asked.

  “Well, I suppose you might say Pete an’ Billie were his friends, in a sort of way.”

  “I mean, outside the group?”

  Mrs Barnes shook her head. “He didn’t really seem to need anybody apart from Steve.”

  “Girlfriends?” Woodend asked.

  “Definitely not,” Mr Barnes said.

  But the chief inspector noted the briefest flicker of doubt cross the woman’s eyes.

  “You don’t seem quite as sure as your husband about that, Mrs Barnes,” he said.

  Eddie’s mother twisted one of the buttons on her cardigan round, until it looked like she’d twist it off.

  “I’m not so sure,” she admitted. “I couldn’t say anythin’ definite, but I have noticed some changes in him recently.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for a start, he bought some expensive aftershave, an’ hid it at the back of his wardrobe.”

  “But you still found it, did you?” Woodend asked, resisting the temptation to smile.

  “It’s not as if I was lookin’ for it,” Mrs Barnes said defensively. “I was only tidyin’ up. But I did think it was strange. Why should he need to go usin’ aftershave when all he’d got on his chin was a bit of bum-fluff?”

  “Anything else?”

  “There were days in the last few weeks when I knew the group wasn’t playin’, but he’d go out anyway. An’ that was unusual – he always stayed at home when he wasn’t with Steve. Very mysterious he was about it, too. When I asked him where he’d been, he’d just change the subject. But if he did have a girlfriend, I don’t see why he didn’t tell us about her.”

  Perhaps because she wasn’t the type of girl he could have taken home to meet his mum and dad, Woodend thought. Because maybe she was more the sort of girl the other members of the group had talked sniggeringly about – the fans who were prepared to go the whole way with one of them, just because the Seagulls had a bit of local fame.

  “I’m sorry, but there’s one more question I simply have to ask,” he said. “Did your son have any enemies?”

  “Enemies?” his father repeated. “No, not our Eddie. I don’t think he ever upset anybody in his entire life.”

  Then who the bloody hell had risked getting a long prison sentence just for the satisfaction of seeing him dead? Woodend wondered.

  On the way back to the centre of Liverpool, Woodend neither said much to Constable Bates, nor paid any attention to the view. Instead, he was thinking about what he had learned about Eddie Barnes – especially his mother’s suspicions that he might be seeing a girl.

  If Eddie had been seeing someone, he would surely have told his best friend Steve Walker, he argued to himself. Or perhaps not. Perhaps there were some things Eddie would have wanted to keep even from him.

  He pictured Eddie falling for one of the girls who hung around the club, and telling Steve about it.

  He could imagine the conversation.

  “You’ve done what?” Walker would say, incredulously.

  “I’ve fallen in love.”

  “Not with that girl you were talkin’ to last night.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She’s nothin’ but a slag. She’s probably been to bed with half the guitarists in Liverpool.”

  “She isn’t like that,” Eddie would protest.

  “They’re all like that.”

  Yes, that was the way it would have gone. Because, like the big brother he almost was, Steve would be overprotective. Because Steve really did see girls as nothing but an opportunity for a one-night stand. And because, possibly, Steve couldn’t bear the thought of Eddie caring more for a girl than he cared for him.

  Eddie definitely wouldn’t have told Steve if he’d had a girlfriend, Woodend decided. But even if he had had one, did that have anything to do with the murder? Could it, for instance, be a spurned boyfriend who had killed Eddie? Would kids really go to that extreme to get their revenge?

  He suddenly felt out of his depth – unable to really understand the people he was having to deal with. In his own day, the jilted boyfriend would have challenged his successor to a fight on the nearest piece of waste ground, so even if he didn’t get the girl back, he would at least keep his honour intact. That was how things had been settled in the thirties. But so much had changed since the war. The old certainties were gone, the codes of behaviour no longer universally agreed on. Life was so different now that he sometimes felt as if he were living in a foreign country.

  The chief inspector sighed and lit up a Capstan Full Strength. “You’re gettin’ philosophical, Charlie,” he told himself, “an’ the last thing this case needs is a philosophical bobby in charge of it.”

  Eight

  It was early evening. The postmen had gone home in anticipation of an early start the next day, and members of the various groups were, presumably, already sitting in back of ancient Bedford vans, jammed between amplifiers as they made their way to gigs in village halls and working men’s clubs. Now, most of the customers drinking in the Grapes were young men with short hair, wearing suits.

  Office workers, Woodend thought. Bank tellers and shipping clerks. He might have ended up as one of them himself, if it hadn’t been for the war. Certainly it had always been his mother’s deepest ambition to see him go out to work each morning dressed in a suit.

  He imagined what she would say if she could have seen him now. Why don’t you follow the example of that nice young sergeant of yours, Charlie, an’ smarten yourself up a bit?

  He chuckled at the thought, then turned to the nice young sergeant in question. “What’s our next move, lad?” he asked.

  Rutter, who always matched his bos
s’s pints with his own halves, lit up one of the cork-tipped cigarettes Woodend was always pulling his leg about.

  “We know the Seagulls were the last group to perform the night before the murder, so it stands to reason that the amplifier was all right at that point,” the sergeant said.

  “Agreed.”

  “So the first logical step would be to question everyone who had an opportunity to meddle with the thing between then and the moment it killed Eddie Barnes.”

  Woodend tilted his head to one side, and looked at his sergeant quizzically. “You might talk about questionin’ everybody who was there, but you’ve already got a suspect in mind, haven’t you, lad?”

  Rutter spluttered into his beer. “How on earth did you know that, sir?”

  “Because I know you,” the chief inspector said. “So come on, sunshine, spit it out.”

  Rutter hesitated for a second, then said, “Rick Johnson.”

  “Why him?” Woodend asked. “I’ll admit he must have got a refund for the course he took at charm school, an’ believe me, there’s nothin’ I’d like better than to see the wife-beatin’ bugger locked up for a good long time – but that still doesn’t make him a murderer.”

  “Look, it probably didn’t take too long to switch round the wiring on the amp, but the murderer still needed some time on his own to do it,” Rutter argued. “Now we know there were four groups playing that night, so how likely is it that the murderer – if he was one of them – would have got even a minute alone?”

  “Not very likely,” Woodend admitted.

  “So, the party breaks up at around one thirty, and everyone goes home. Everyone, that is, apart from Rick Johnson and his wife. And that’s when the re-wiring is done.”

  Woodend stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Does Johnson look thick to you?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t bet on him to win Brain of Britain, but he doesn’t strike me as stupid.”

  “I agree with you there,” Woodend said. “So the question we have to ask ourselves is this – if he’d really wanted to kill Eddie Barnes, would he have chosen that method, knowin’ that somebody was bound to reach the same conclusion as you just have?”