Boiling Point Read online

  ‘Coffee for two, Celeste,’ I said before turning to the client.

  Would I care to help her gather evidence for a sexual harassment case against her former boss? She had the money to pay me. A legacy had recently come her way.

  I would. Employment tribunals represent an expanding field for the upcoming private investigator.

  Georgia Greenidge poured out her story. The confusingly named George Gammage, her supervisor at a credit card company, wanted to have his wicked way with her. She had made it very clear that she did not welcome Gammage’s attentions. Now he’d fired her and she wanted to do the business on him.

  I scrawled the words Greenidge, Gammages, Damages on my notepad, a limerick already struggling to be born at the back of my mind.

  The euphoniously named boss had tried his luck with most of the other girls in the office, always threatening to reward failure to co-operate with dismissal. I studied Georgia’s features as she spoke. There was something legendary about her – the Greek legend about the three sisters who share a single eye and a single tooth. That wasn’t fair, but she was on the ugly side of plain without having the sort of face that makes young children cry out in fright. You could say she was strong featured. As these un-correct thoughts popped up unbidden, like poisonous mushrooms on a dewy green lawn, I struggled to suppress them.

  Plain or ugly, Georgia was entitled to help. All I had to do was to contact nine other women who’d recently left the office and find out if they were prepared to make statements against Gammage. The man was obviously a menace, a man of no restraint if he was prepared to resort to blackmail to impose himself on poor Miss Greenidge. Clearly, he had Georgia on his mind.

  When she’d gone I jotted the names Greenidge/Gammage on top of a file and then wondered idly if it was the potential for alliteration that attracted Gammage. I decided not.

  These thoughts were still buzzing round my head when I joined the stream of traffic leaving Manchester along with all the other sex-hungry office workers, disappointed husbands and pet-lovers.

  18

  ‘DAVE, YOU LOOK like an actor who’s just been told that he’s not getting the star part he was promised.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You were hoping that Cullen would arrest you and give you the reason you needed to get involved with the Carlyles.’

  I’d made the mistake of telling Janine about my exciting morning. Being told that she knew me better than I knew myself was mildly annoying but I didn’t feel like starting a quarrel.

  ‘Not at all,’ I claimed. ‘The only thing I’m devoted to now is the steady accumulation of capital, a healthy bank balance, and the prospect of being able to convince the woman I love to relax her defences long enough for me to get close to her.’

  ‘But which woman is it that you love?’ she asked.

  ‘You know very well.’

  ‘Let’s just try to get through the next few months without any more crisis calls to deliver cash to indigent rich women at Stockport Station and then we’ll see how things are working out.’

  ‘Yes, that’s all I want,’ I said lamely. ‘Let’s get on with our lives.’

  ‘Yes. Listen, Dave, you need to keep your nose right out of that designing little tramp’s business. Our crime editor on the paper reckons that the police are putting Olley’s murder down to family squabbles among the Carlyles, so your new lady friend is probably involved right up to her false eyelashes.’

  ‘Oh!’

  As often when perplexed I retreated to my kitchen. I’d been spending so much time in Janine’s flat that my own kitchen was showing signs of neglect. There was brown carbonised grease on the oven racks. Working slowly, I rubbed each metal bar down until the gleaming steel underneath was completely revealed. Then I noticed dirt or grease in the narrow cracks where the glass of the oven door fitted into the frame. It took me the best part of an hour of dedicated labour before the last trace was removed. By then I was beginning to feel hungry.

  I cooked a large portion of pasta with mozzarella and tomato and stolidly munched my way through it. As digestion eventually took hold ruffled feathers folded back into place. I was as comatose as a recently fed crocodile by the time the phone rang.

  It seemed to be ringing with an unnaturally penetrating noise. As my hand went down to the receiver an expectant voice at the back of my brain seemed to say ‘Marti?’

  ‘Cunane?’ a disappointingly deep male voice enquired.

  ‘Yes,’ I grated, finding the word right at the back of my throat.

  ‘I’ve got to see you, it’s urgent.’

  My caller obviously expected me to know who he was but for the life of me I couldn’t place him. My brain seemed to be clogged with glue.

  ‘Why now?’ I asked, playing for time. ‘Can’t you see me at the office tomorrow?’

  ‘Smart idea,’ the voice commented sarcastically. ‘The police still have tapes up round the spot where they hope to prove I arranged for Lou Olley to be killed. I’ll look well walking into your office past a parade of CID men.’

  The penny dropped. It was Charlie Carlyle. I tried to get my brain into gear.

  ‘You could come round,’ I suggested tentatively.

  ‘They’ve been asking me all day long if I’m involved with you in some way. The last thing I want is to come round to your dump.’

  His sweet-natured comment restored normal service to my cortical processes.

  ‘Where would you suggest that’s grand enough for you? A suite at the Midland?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in exactly that tone which conveys lack of sorrow. ‘That came out wrong. I’m stressed. Listen, I must speak to you about Marti. It’s life and death really.’

  ‘That urgent?’ I muttered.

  ‘Cunane, I know I offered you cash in hand last time we met and you threw it back in my face but I’m really begging you now. Name your own price; anything, a job, some action, anything you want. I need to see you.’

  What was going on here? He was trying to put me in the frame for the Olley killing.

  ‘Oh, yeah, Charlie boy,’ I drawled. ‘I turn up for a meet and you finger me to the fuzz as the stage manager of Lou Olley’s final scene?’

  ‘Don’t be so dramatic, Cunane. No one thinks you arranged Olley’s death, but I know you had something to do with my wife’s sudden exit. I’m desperate to see her again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Turn up and find out if you haven’t lost your bottle.’

  ‘And why should I do that? Last time we met you had a bent copper and your minder with you. I may be stupid but I don’t intend to repeat that experience.’

  ‘That was a total mistake, Olley’s fault. I swear on my mother’s grave that I’ll be on my own.’

  I was quiet for a moment. If I’d received a tenner every time I’d heard some scumbag swearing on his mother’s grave I’d have been able to retire years ago and motherhood would have gone out of fashion. But caution was at war with curiosity and it was finding itself outgunned.

  In the end I arranged to meet Carlyle in the car park of a hotel near the airport about halfway between his home and my dump. Janine had suggested that I was seeking a starring role in events which were none of my concern yet here was Charlie Carlyle, the Charlie Carlyle, demanding to meet me.

  The rough-spoken world was shrouded in darkness when I got out of the flat. It was foggy with an early autumnal mist.

  I drove carefully down the M56 to the turn-off for the airport and then on past the second runway to where the Swiss Village Hotel nestled in a valley close to the ravaged woods of Styal. I stopped on the road outside the hotel and went ahead on foot. The intermittent roaring from the runway apart, it was a quiet night.

  Sure enough, there was a Rolls-Royce sitting in isolation at the far corner of the almost empty car park. I couldn’t see anyone moving about but that proved nothing. Carlyle could have a hundred men concealed. When I retraced my steps to my own car I had
the feeling that in every sense I’d come too far to turn back. I’d helped Marti and inadvertently Charlie. To the police I was already culpable. Self-preservation dictated that I try to find out more.

  As soon as I pulled into the car park Carlyle flashed the lights of his Roller at me. I slipped the Mondeo into a space next to him and wound down my window. There was an answering buzz as his electric window slid open.

  ‘Cunane! Get in, man! I’m not sitting here shouting across at you,’ he said. Even in the dim lighting of the car park Carlyle’s red face seemed to be glowing from an unhealthy source of internal heat.

  I shook my head.

  ‘You get in here, big boy. Last time we met you had muscle with you.’

  He gave a sour look at this reminder and reluctantly abandoned the padded leather and mahogany luxury of his car. You can’t really slam the door of a Rolls-Royce but Charlie did his best. The door shut with a heavy clunk, and he joined me. Suddenly the Mondeo felt crowded. There was a smell of new leather from the jacket he was wearing. The man who sat next to me now was very different from the aggressive maniac of our first encounter and also from the would-be hard man who’d come looking for Marti at my office. All the stiffness had gone out of him. He slumped into the car seat like an outsized sack of spuds.

  ‘What gives, Chief?’ I said.

  ‘Was it you with Marti at the Renaissance yesterday?’ he asked nervously.

  There didn’t seem to be any point in denying it so I nodded my head.

  ‘Thank God,’ he gasped fervently.

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘The manager phoned to remind me that I hadn’t paid for the room my wife and I had used.’

  ‘Oh,’ I murmured.

  ‘Crafty bugger, aren’t you?’

  ‘Have you told the police I was impersonating you?’

  ‘Like hell I have. Where’s Marti now?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s not with you, at your flat in Chorlton, I mean?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think she would be.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I retorted. ‘Don’t you think my squalid little home would be good enough for her?’

  ‘Cunane, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot. Can we rewind things back to the beginning and start over?’

  ‘You trying to bash Marti’s head in was the foot we got off on, mate; and then you having me slapped round my own office by Olley and that tame policeman of yours.’

  ‘It’s no good me apologising for what Olley did but what you saw at Tarn that day wasn’t quite as it seemed.’ There was a bashful grin on his face.

  I suppose it was the curiosity that had brought me so far that kept me sitting there waiting to hear what the poor little rich boy had to say.

  ‘You’re a cheeky devil, aren’t you, Cunane? Signing that register in my name . . . but your sheer brass neck has saved me some awkward questions.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Were you busy making sure Olley’s gambling days were over?’

  Charlie-Boy clenched his fists and ground his teeth in anger. I tensed myself to hit him back if he went into rage-overload.

  ‘Of course I wasn’t,’ he eventually bleated. ‘Do I look like the sort of person who does that sort of thing?’

  ‘If you want sympathy from me you’ve come to the wrong shop,’ I told him.

  ‘Answer me,’ he insisted angrily. ‘Do I look like the sort of person who gets involved like that?’

  ‘Don’t come fishing for compliments from me. I saw the bruise you put on Marti’s face.’

  ‘What are you on about? I told you, I’ve never hit her.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Get out of this bloody heap of scrap metal and we’ll sort this out once and for all,’ he snarled. ‘You need a good smacking and you’re going to get it.’ His hand clawed along the door searching, but failing, to find the handle.

  ‘Fine by me,’ I said. ‘I’d just love to see what you’re like when you haven’t got a shotgun or a minder with you.’ This produced no reply apart from a lot of very heavy breathing. He struggled to master his temper and stopped trying to open the door.

  ‘I didn’t come here for this,’ he muttered eventually. ‘What the hell are you, Cunane? Some sort of antediluvian Communist? I thought you were a businessman.’

  I made no response to his plea for capitalist solidarity. He sounded pathetically sorry for himself.

  ‘I was involved in some very delicate negotiations at the time Olley was stupid enough to get himself killed. The people I was with are not the sort you can ask for an alibi.’

  ‘Oh, I see, criminals. What were they, Turkish drug dealers?’

  He laughed, and he laughed, and he laughed. Tears started streaking down his fleshy face. He took out a handkerchief and began dabbing it at that big red dial of his. I didn’t feel exactly gratified to be the source of so much mirth but I wasn’t in any doubt that he was amused. I told myself that his change of mood was down to relief that we weren’t trying to punch each other’s lights out.

  ‘Christ! Cunane, it’s true what they say about you,’ he wheezed eventually.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you’ve got a vivid imagination, that’s what. Listen, man, there are occasions in business when it’s not a good idea to make it public knowledge who you’re talking to – takeovers, mergers, that sort of thing. Believe me, when there’s big money involved I’m not about to put much faith in the confidentiality of the constabulary.’

  ‘So when did you decide that it was time for Olley to cash his chips?’

  ‘I’m telling you that I had nothing to do with Olley.’

  ‘Do you ever stop lying?’

  ‘You’re just like the police, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Do you ever believe what anyone tells you?’

  ‘Convince me then.’

  ‘The firm had to let Olley go. You saw what he was like. He couldn’t make the transition from being Mr Heavy-about-Town to being a . . . oh, hell! . . . a business associate. He hasn’t worked for us in months. I think I just about managed to convince the police of that, but they want to see Marti to confirm that I haven’t any motive for killing the thick-necked yob. Her disappearing like this, it’s a damned nuisance.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I muttered. ‘What a shame.’

  ‘I’m not going to insult you again by offering you chicken feed. Name your figure, man, but I need to know where Marti is.’

  ‘Sorry, no can do.’

  ‘What is it with you? I am her husband.’

  ‘Yes, and you just happen to like using her as your sparring partner.’

  ‘That again! You may not believe me but I’ve never actually struck her with my fist.’

  ‘Chuck it, Charlie. I’ve seen her with a black eye. She was terrified of you.’

  ‘Did she say it was me gave her the black eye? No! Or me that she was terrified of? No!’ There was something in his voice that rang true. Charlie wasn’t a clever enough liar to keep faking all that indignation. There was no doubting what I’d seen at Tarn, though. Charlie-Boy liked to use his strength, if not his fists, on women.

  ‘I’m not denying that Marti and I have had our problems but if you guessed for a million years you’d never come up with the reason, not even with your imagination.’

  ‘So what was the reason?’

  ‘None of your business,’ he snapped. Then he paused for a moment. ‘Let’s just say that Marti is more ambitious for me than I am for myself.’

  ‘How cryptic,’ I sneered.

  ‘You’d never believe me if I told you the full story.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Some other time. Believe me, all that’s urgent now is that you tell me where Marti is. I know she trusts you. She must have told you where she was going.’

  All kinds of thoughts went through my mind. By letting the Renaissance alibi stand, I was already an accessory after the fact as far as the law was concerned.

  ‘Why were th
e police so certain it was you at the Renaissance?’ I asked. ‘Surely they asked the staff for a description.’

  ‘You were wearing a blue suit, I was wearing a blue suit. You’re tall, I’m tall. You’ve got a ruddy complexion, so have I,’ he explained.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a face the colour of a boiled lobster.’

  ‘No more than you have,’ he replied evenly. ‘The proof of the pudding’s in the eating – your general description fitted me well enough to satisfy them.’

  Talking gave me a little time to think. Strengthening Charlie’s alibi might just give Marti the weapon she needed in her matrimonial battle with him.

  ‘Get out of the car then,’ I ordered. ‘I’ll have to phone her and find out if she’s willing to talk.’

  ‘Thanks, Cunane,’ he sighed. ‘You won’t regret this.’

  ‘I don’t want anything you’ve got on offer. Try to buy me again and the deal’s off.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, man, just cut out the dramatics and phone her.’ Having said his piece Charlie hopped out of the car with surprising agility for such a large man. He stood by the Rolls and lit a cigarette. I looked at his face as he held the lighter up.

  He leaned back into my car.

  ‘Listen, mate, I’ll do you a good turn – have nothing to do with my dear father-in-law, Vince King. My old fellow might get seriously peevish if you do.’

  ‘Oh, thanks for the advice, old boy,’ I murmured in a cut-glass accent. There was something about Charlie that brought out the unwashed proletarian in me. Even so, I took out my mobile and phoned the number Marti had given me.

  ‘Who is this?’ a flat Yorkshire voice demanded. I guessed that I was speaking to Paul Longstreet, the popular mogul of the lap dancing world.

  ‘Dave Cunane, I want to speak to Marti King,’ I snapped.

  ‘Are you the new man in her life, cocker?’

  ‘No, I just want to speak to her. Is she there or not?’