Shooting Elvis Read online

  Shooting Elvis

  STUART PAWSON

  To Doreen

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  About the Author

  By Stuart Pawson

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  Copyright

  As always, thanks to the following for their unfailing help:

  Dennis Marshall, John Crawford, Dave Mason, Clive Kingswood, Dave Balfour.

  Special thanks to DCI Peter Ramsay and the staff of the North East RART, who are pioneering new techniques in the fight against crime, and to Karl Floyd, who uses more traditional methods. Apologies to them for my departures from police procedure, but the story takes precedence.

  Chapter One

  ‘Don’t touch him!’ Dave ordered, alarm giving his words a sharp edge. ‘He might still be alive.’

  I looked at the eyes rolled back in their sockets like one of El Greco’s saints, at the silver streak of dried dribble from the toothless cavern of his mouth and at the flies homing in on the corpse, attracted by the smell of corruption that was as inviting to them as freshly baked bread is to hungry coppers.

  ‘Pardon?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t mean living and breathing alive,’ he explained. ‘I mean electricity alive.’

  I withdrew the hand I’d extended towards the man’s neck in the hope of making a snap judgement on the time of death – nothing precise: this morning or last week would have done – and straightened up.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I see what you mean.’

  I’m Charlie Priest of Heckley CID, and Dave is big Dave ‘Sparky’ Sparkington, one of my detective constables. We work together most of the time and over the years Dave has stopped me making a prat of myself on numerous occasions, plus saving me from stabbings, shootings, various custard pies, and now, electrocution. The body was sprawled in an easy chair with the man’s arms resting on his knees, the palms turned upwards as if in supplication. An orange electric cable like the one for my vacuum cleaner snaked away from him and terminated at a wall socket. At this end the wires were bared and wrapped round his thumbs – the brown wire around his left, the blue around the right. A whisky glass was wedged between the man’s leg and the chair arm, together with a set of lower dentures, and an empty Bell’s bottle lay on the floor. The upper dentures sat in his lap.

  I followed the cable to the wall socket. It was plugged into a timer that looked to me as if we were now in an off part of the cycle but I wasn’t taking any chances. I switched the socket off, using the end of my thumbnail, and Dave wrote the details of the timer in his notebook.

  ‘So did he jump or was he pushed?’ he asked, clicking the top back on his pen.

  ‘It’s a good way to murder someone,’ I said, ‘if you can get them to stay still long enough.’

  ‘That’s what the whisky’s for.’

  ‘And not a bad way to commit suicide.’

  ‘God, you’d have to be desperate. There’d be no going back.’

  We’d both seen enough suicides to know that the person usually changes his or her mind when it’s too late. The water closes over them, paralysingly cold, and they make a desperate attempt to swim to the side. Or they kick the chair away and as the cord bites into their neck they try to climb the wall. We’d both seen the arcs of skid marks that trainers have left on cell walls, testament to a change of heart.

  ‘What do you think?’ Dave asked.

  The deceased’s home help, who came once a week to clean for him, had found the body and sent for an ambulance. The ambulance men had sent for us. My job was to decide on the degree of police involvement. It was a suspicious death but that didn’t mean anything criminal had taken place. An old man – he looked about seventy – had topped himself. That’s all. He’d grown tired of life, perhaps he had some medical history, and he’d decided to get out while he could. It happened all the time and I had a certain sympathy for that point of view. Sitting gaga in a nursing home staring at a wall or, worse, daytime television, had little appeal to me.

  A suicide would be tidy. We were overworked and over budget, and needed another murder enquiry like giant pandas need contraception. I looked at the old man and the shiny orange cable that connected him to the national grid as if he were a Christmas tree. We were in a depressing room in the downstairs flat of what are known as maisonettes in this part of the world. They are blocks of four flats, each with its own outside door, which have now been taken over as sheltered housing for older citizens. Some are carefully looked after by sprightly ladies and gentlemen, and some have fallen into neglect, inhabited by folks too tired to care, worn out but defiantly clinging on to their independence.

  This one was in the latter stages of decay, but in a week or two it would be cleaned out, given a fresh lick of paint and a new tenant would move in. It’s a natural progression and it’s strictly one way. I looked around the room, trying to read the signs that would tell me about the dead man.

  There wasn’t much. Three days’ worth of tabloids – the raunchier ones with bare breasts and crutch shots (Danielle has a degree in accountancy, she can massage our figures anytime!!!) – and an assortment of beer cans, all empty. The stale air in the room stank of tobacco smoke, the mantelpiece and a small table by his chair were fringed by a pattern of cigarette burns and there was a piled-up pub ashtray down by his feet. So he liked a drink and he smoked. They pay me for deductions like that.

  The furniture was shoddy and the curtains were dingy. He’d probably inherited them with the flat. I couldn’t imagine anybody bringing and installing stuff like that, but he may have lived there a long time. He owned a couple of cheap candle holders, complete with half-burned candles, and a decorative plate celebrating the centenary of Oldfield brass band. The pendulum of a clock in a glass dome swung dispassionately to and fro, to and fro, measuring the passage of time, as if we could forget it. The television was off, plugged into an adaptor it shared with a table lamp and a convector heater. The plastic adaptor, discoloured brown with overheating, lay on the floor under the fateful socket.

  I walked over to look at the clock. A little plate screwed to its base bore the inscription: To Alfred, from his mates at Ellis and Newbold’s, April 1996. Fifty years’ service and they buy you a clock. How thoughtful. The home help had told us that he was called Alfred Armitage.

  ‘Have you been in one of these flats before?’ I asked.

  ‘Mmm,’ Dave replied.

  ‘Where would you keep the vacuum cleaner?’

  ‘There’s a cupboard under the stairs.’

  We moved out of the room into the hallway and Dave pulled open a wooden door with a sloping top. The cupboard was piled high with the normal household junk, but the front item was an ancient upright Hoover, complete with coiled cable.

  ‘It might be faulty,’ Dave said, so I lifted the cleaner out of the cupboard and carried it into the tiny kitchen. He plugged it in, I pressed the button and the Hoover roared into life.

  ‘Not much wrong with that,’ I declared, after it had whined to a standstill.

  ‘So why’d he buy a new length of flex just to top himself?’

  ‘Good question.’

  ‘Ring the pathologist?’

  ‘Yeah, we’d better. And the rest.’ I glanced towards the door into the room where the old man lay. Th
e Superintendent would not be pleased. ‘All is not what it seems,’ I said. ‘It’s a bit late, now, but let’s see if we can give the poor old sod some attention. He probably deserves it.’

  ‘Tell me again,’ the superintendent, Gilbert Wood, said, glancing at the clock on the wall behind me. We were in his office on the top floor of Heckley nick.

  ‘He looks a good candidate for suicide,’ I told him, ‘but a few things don’t add up. Wiring your thumbs to the mains and then drinking yourself into oblivion might seem a good way to go out, but it does require a certain amount of technical aptitude.’

  Gilbert said, ‘There was a case somewhere a few months ago where a fellow erected this complicated guillotine and went to sleep under it. When he was well away the blade dropped and decapitated him.’

  ‘I remember it. But I’ve no doubt he had some mechanical know-how, not to mention imagination. Poor old Alfred Armitage had worked at a company called Ellis and Newbold’s all his life, as a storeman. They made brass castings for plumbing accessories until they went bust. I suspect his electrical skills were about the same as mine – nil, and his imagination didn’t extend beyond whipping the knickers off the bimbos in Sunday Sport. There was no knife lying around for baring the wires, there was no note and he bought bread, bacon and beer at Morrison’s two days ago.’

  ‘Sounds like a good diet.’

  ‘It does, doesn’t it?’

  ‘So where are you with it now?’

  ‘PM scheduled for five o’clock. Jeff Caton’s on his way there. The rest of the troops are knocking on doors and talking to the neighbours, looking into his background, anything that might help. Ellis and Newbold’s closed down in 1998, so we’ll have problems finding anybody who worked with him.’

  ‘Big meeting in the morning?’

  ‘I think so. When we know a bit more about the man and his background we’ll be in a better position to make a judgement. Who knows? He may have connections with Colombian drug cartels.’

  ‘Or he might be a harmless old codger who reached the end of his tether.’

  ‘You could be right.’

  ‘Either way, tomorrow could be a long day, so I suggest you get off home while you can.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  Back downstairs the troops were filtering in. I asked them all if there was anything earth-shattering and they all shook their heads. ‘Then save it for the meeting in the morning,’ I told them. In my own office I rang High Adventure, an indoor-outdoor pursuits resort over in Oldfield, and asked to speak to the assistant manager.

  ‘It’s Charlie,’ I said, when Sonia Thornton answered the phone. Sonia was an international athlete until a car accident smashed her knee two days before she was due to fly out to the Atlanta Olympics. I met her six months ago, after her ex-boyfriend was murdered, and we’ve been seeing a lot of each other since.

  ‘Hi Charlie!’ she said, brightly. ‘What sort of a day have you had?’

  ‘Busy, as usual. We have a suspicious death on our hands.’

  ‘Oh! Does that mean you’ll be late home? The casserole in the slow cooker should be OK for a while. You can leave stuff in them for days and they never dry out. Well, maybe not days, but a long time. Should I have mine or wait for you? Or I could make you…’

  ‘Sonia!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shut up. No I won’t be late home. Remember what you promised?’

  ‘Um, I’m not so sure…’

  ‘It’s tonight or never.’

  ‘Do we have to?’

  ‘Yes. You promised.’

  ‘It’s been a long time.’

  ‘I know, and it’s not easy for you, but you’ll be OK.’

  ‘Right, if you say so.’

  ‘I do. And you want to, don’t you?’

  ‘I think so, but I’m a bit scared.’

  ‘Uncle Charlie will look after you.’

  ‘Then I’ve nothing to worry about, have I?’

  ‘No. What are you wearing?’

  ‘My office clothes. I’ll change at your place.’

  ‘Don’t be late.’

  ‘Or you.’

  On the way home I called in B&Q and bought ten metres of flex like the stuff that lit up Alfred Armitage. Sonia had run the fastest 5,000 metres in the world in 1996 and was a serious contender for a gold medal. She was unknown outside Yorkshire until the Olympic trials, when she strode home an easy winner and Britain had a new golden girl. After a race in France the press there dubbed her La Gazelle and the name stuck. A lot was expected of her.

  But a car accident destroyed the dream. Her right knee was shattered and her confidence torn to shreds. Surgery and rest repaired the knee, but when she tried to train again it let her down. When I met her she hadn’t run for six years.

  You’ve got to learn to walk before you can run. She’d done some rock climbing as a teenager but wasn’t as familiar with the hills as I was. I took her to the Dales, the Lakes and down into Derbyshire. We tramped all over Wensleydale, Swaledale, the North York Moors and the Peak District. If the weather was bad we stayed nearer home, trudging up onto Saddleworth and Withens Clough in our waterproofs, grinning at each other’s discomfort as the occasional trickle of rain found its way down our necks.

  But before all that I took her to see John Wesley Williamson, better known as Dr Bones. The Doc is physiotherapist to the stars, and his hands have restored the flagging careers of more football and rugby players than Grecian 2000 and Viagra. I don’t know what his written qualifications are, if he has any, but his hands work magic. They say he was a major league basketball player in the Caribbean until a brain tumour robbed him of his sight.

  I hadn’t told Sonia that he was blind when I persuaded her to see him. She said she’d had the best medical advice available, paid for by the AAA, but it hadn’t worked. I said she hadn’t seen Dr Bones. He rose to greet us when we entered his consulting room and extended a hand. I felt Sonia hesitate as I made the introductions. She shook his hand and we sat down.

  ‘First of all, how are you, Mr Priest?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine, Doc. I’m fine.’

  ‘Still got the pellets in your back?’

  ‘Yes, they’re still there.’

  ‘But no trouble?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well, after all this time I doubt if they will be.’ He paused for a beat, before saying, ‘I won’t charge you for that,’ and throwing his head back in laughter. ‘And now,’ he went on, ‘let’s have a look at Miss Thornton.’

  Sonia was wearing her running shorts and a baggy T-shirt. He walked around his desk, trailing a finger along its edge, and Sonia reached for his extended arm, telling him where she was. ‘I’m here.’ He took her hand and he asked her to turn round and stand up straight. He put his hands on her neck, massaging it, feeling for knots in the muscles, abnormalities in the bones. Slowly he worked over her shoulders and down her spine, hips and legs. ‘Could you lie on the couch, please?’ Sonia did as she was told and now he concentrated on her knees: first the left one and then the right.

  ‘Does this hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any discomfort?’

  ‘No.’

  He flexed her legs, holding each ankle with one hand, the knee with the other, his face pointing away, as if something on the wall was demanding his attention.

  He said, ‘Your patella was shattered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did they clean it up?’

  ‘They took some bits of bone out, I believe.’

  ‘Any other fractures?’

  ‘The top of my tibia.’

  ‘That’s a typical dashboard injury.’

  I’d carried my chair off to one side slightly, out of the way. I watched the Doc stretch Sonia’s legs out and rest them on the couch before feeling his way back behind his desk. ‘Come and sit down, please, Miss Thornton,’ he said. She swung off the couch and took her seat facing him across the desk.

  ‘Did you play
games at school?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No sports at all?’

  ‘None. It was a convent school. They didn’t consider it proper for girls to do sports.’

  I sat up and smiled. I’d never realised she was a convent girl. I’d heard about convent girls.

  ‘And you believe that your knee problem is due to injury to your cruciate ligament?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that what they told you?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘The anterior cruciate ligament?’

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘It’s an easy diagnosis to make, probably owing more to statistical probability than clinical judgement. Female athletes are more prone to injuries to the anterior cruciate ligament than men, partly because they do not strengthen the supporting muscles by playing games when young, and partly because of the wider hips, although that’s obviously not a problem in your case. But your injury is not a strain, caused by strenuous activity. It was traumatic damage, caused by a motor accident. The injury is to your posterior ligament, not the anterior. In other words, the one at the back of your knee. Generally speaking, this is a stronger ligament, much bigger, and does not usually fail. It’s the weaker, front one that goes. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that we can deal with.’

  ‘We can?’

  ‘No problem.’

  Rest and then exercise was the solution. She’d had the rest, so now it was a strict regime of exercises to strengthen up the supporting muscles around the knee. Running hammered the joint, but it did little to strengthen it. When the Doc learned that Sonia had access to a million pound gymnasium, you’d have thought he’d won the lottery.

  ‘You’re a remarkable young woman,’ he told her. ‘God has given you a perfect physique and a remarkable talent. You can conquer this. OK, so you probably won’t ever run at the Olympics, but you can beat the injury and run again. Maybe even win races. Do you hear what I’m saying?’

  Sonia nodded, then said, ‘I think so, Dr Williamson.’