‘No!’ There was panic in Tracey’s insistence. He had realised now how bad it looked for him. He hadn’t thought they’d have known anything about his new employment with Lennon. It must look as if he’d defected immediately after O’Connor’s death, or more probably by prior arrangement. If these start-lingly well-informed pair of filth thought that, they probably thought he’d killed the man as part of the deal. ‘I served James O’Connor well — did everything he asked me to.’
‘I’ll bet you did.’ Peach looked at him as though he was something he’d scraped off his shoe. ‘As long as it suited you. Until someone else offered you more. Until one of your employer’s rivals bought you and your palookas.’
Steve wished the man wouldn’t keep throwing in that strange word. He was fighting for his life here, with the pig flinging in daft words whilst he tried to think straight. He said between jaws which were suddenly stiff, ‘I didn’t shoot O’Connor.’
‘Then who did, Tracey? You seem like our prime suspect to me, and I’m happy to have it that way.’ Percy gave the man a smile which emphasized that pleasure.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’ll need to do better than that, won’t you? From your point of view, I mean, not mine. I’m happy to let suspicion gather around you.’
Peach wasn’t, of course. They’d need significant sightings to pin this on Tracey. The Crown Prosecution Service wouldn’t look at it until they were given solid evidence to mount a case. But men on the other side of the law didn’t always appreciate that: they thought coppers could rig a case against anyone they chose to frame. Peach had no real reason to think this man had killed O’Connor, but he would exploit his fear as he would exploit any other emotion to help to elicit facts. ‘You claim you didn’t kill this man you were handsomely paid to defend. So who the hell did?’
‘I don’t know.’ Tracey thrashed his brain in search of words to frame some defence, then shook his head dumbly.
‘Because even scum like you would have to admit that it doesn’t look good for you. You’ve just been offered new and lucrative employment with the man who is planning to take over O’Connor’s dubious empire. Immediately after your previous employer has been gunned down in cold blood. Now why would an efficient sod like Lennon take on someone who has just failed to protect the man who previously paid his wages? Answer: because he was rewarding an assignment which had been efficiently completed.’
‘He wasn’t. I didn’t fire that bullet.’
‘Looks like an open and shut case to me, DS Northcott. Wouldn’t you say so?’
‘I would indeed, sir. An open and shut case.’ Clyde Northcott repeated the cliche appreciatively, as if he had just encountered it for the first time. ‘I should think the Chief Constable will be delighted to have this cleared up so quickly.’
‘I didn’t do this,’ Tracey repeated, dogged but hopeless. ‘I want a brief.’
Percy beamed delightedly. ‘Most sensible thing we’ve heard from you this morning, Mr Tracey. But you’re not under caution. Not yet. On paper, you’re a good citizen helping the police with their enquiries.’ He shook his head and smiled a little at the absurdity of that. Then his voice was suddenly as hard as steel. ‘So if you didn’t kill him, Tracey, who the hell did?’
‘I don’t know. I’d tell you if I did.’
‘Would you, indeed? Let me put this another way, then. Why didn’t you protect the man who paid you to do just that?’
Steve Tracey wanted to say that the protection of his employer had been only an incidental part of his brief; that his job had been principally to frighten others and to bring them to heel by violence if they did not comply. But beating people into submission was hardly a job description he could pursue with the filth. He took a deep, hopeless breath. This wasn’t going to sound good. More importantly, it wasn’t even going to sound believable, not to these men who wanted to put him away for a long stretch. But he couldn’t see how to dress it up as anything stronger. ‘I asked James O’Connor if he wanted protection only minutes before he was shot. He announced a comfort break before the speeches which hadn’t been scheduled in the programme and I offered to stay with him through it. He said he didn’t need me.’
He did his best to make it sound like a dereliction of duty on O’Connor’s part, thought Peach. And it was true that his departure from the official programme was the sort of change security men never liked. In this case, indeed, you could say it had been a fatal change. ‘But what happened showed that he did need you — assuming that we accept for the moment your claim that you were still on his side. So who killed him? You must see now that if it wasn’t you, it’s very much in your interests to reveal who did this. You don’t need a brief to tell you that.’
Indeed he didn’t. Steve desperately wanted them to believe him, but he knew that in their place he’d be every bit as sceptical as they were. He stared straight ahead of him. ‘I don’t know. My money would be on a hit man employed by one of his enemies.’
‘Evidence?’
‘The way in which he died. The papers say he was shot in the head. I haven’t anything else.’ Still he gazed straight ahead. To look into the round, unbelieving face of his tormentor would shake his own belief in the words he was mouthing.
Peach let those words hang for a moment, as if he wished to emphasize how inadequate they were. Then he said, ‘Where were you during this interval?’
‘I was in the reception area at the front of the building. I spoke to two of my men who had been on the lowest table, at the end of the banqueting hall, where they could see everything that was going on. I wanted to know if they’d seen anything suspicious.’
‘I’m sure you did.’ Peach let his cynicism hammer each monosyllable hard. ‘And no doubt they hadn’t.’
‘No. And I had to tell them that Mr O’Connor felt he didn’t need protection that evening. If he hadn’t said that, maybe he’d be alive now.’
‘Maybe. And maybe you wouldn’t. Assuming, that is, that you’re telling the truth. Very big assumption, that is. Make a note that this man was absent from the banqueting hall at the moment when James O’Connor was killed, please, DS Northcott.’
Clyde nodded. ‘Already done, sir.’ He shifted his chair even nearer to Tracey’s. ‘What weapon do you carry, Mr Tracey?’
Steve started a little as the point of attack changed from the white and smiling round face of Peach to the stern black features of his bagman. He wanted to say he wasn’t armed, but that would be ridiculous in someone paid to do the things he did. ‘A Smith amp; Wesson.357.’
Northcott didn’t comment, but allowed himself a rare grin as he wrote the details down. Tracey said defensively, ‘There are a lot of them about.’
Peach was back in immediately. ‘There are indeed, Mr Tracey. Especially in criminal circles. And a lot of them are used as murder weapons, as in this case. Don’t leave the area without telling us exactly where you’re intending to flee to, will you?’
And as suddenly as they had arrived, they were gone, leaving Steve Tracey feeling more limp than he had ever felt in his adult life.
It was a bleak May day in north-east Lancashire. No rain threatened, but the sky was the colour of pewter and a light but cutting wind blew from the east.
Detective Chief Inspector Peach’s temper had not been improved by his morning interview with Steve Tracey, who was the kind of villain he found most frustrating: violent and destructive but also elusive. He couldn’t see any easy or swift solution to the Jim O’Connor murder. The toad in the hole in the canteen was undercooked and indigestible. When he returned to his office, his gloom was completed by a summons to consult with the head of the Brunton CID section, Chief Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker.
‘Are you near to an arrest, Peach?’ was Tucker’s greeting.
‘Your statement to the media said that enquiries were proceeding satisfactorily, sir.’ Percy decided to sit down in front of the chief’s large and noticeably empty desk.