KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) Read online

  ‘Don’t be flippant. That’s always been a failing of yours.’

  ‘Is he or isn’t he in politics?’

  ‘Not at the moment. Although in an important position, he’s quite obscure. But that may count in his favour. The elites of this country; political, military, religious, civil service, even judicial have been discredited by recent wars and events. The fact that this villain is obscure will work to his advantage. I believe he intends to use another man in the political sphere as his front.’

  ‘And how do you know all this?’

  ‘I told you I’m conducting an official enquiry. The enquiry was intended to be a minor one. It was probably meant to be a white wash job but in the way these things do something unexpected cropped up. A certain person revealed information about the plot, believing I was a party to it. I know that the man I suspect is a ruthless killer.’

  ‘Are you in danger?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘I can get you bodyguards, top men.’

  ‘No, that would confirm his suspicions and place you in needless danger unless you agree to proceed with his disposal at once.’

  ‘So I’m between a rock and hard place?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Why do you think I came to you? I’ve heard the rumours?’

  ‘What rumours?’

  ‘Let’s just say that there are rumours that various villains who’ve come up against you have disappeared and that the police have been unable to trace them despite strenuous efforts.’

  ‘That’s utter rubbish!’

  ‘Judges gossip, just like everyone else,’ he said, sensing that he had me at a disadvantage, ‘and, David, I wasn’t condemning you. From what I heard those who vanished were thoroughly bad sorts who richly deserved their fate, whatever it was.’

  ‘Just stop it, Lew! From soliciting murder you’ve now gone to blackmail in one easy move. I’d have thought you’d be aware of the laws of libel and slander.’

  ‘Oh, really, then when I was told that if a certain wealthy man’s garden was to be excavated they’ll find dead men’s bones that was a lie, was it?’

  ‘What wealthy man?’ I gasped.

  ‘A wealthy banker called Elsworth who owns a house in an exclusive suburb.’

  I felt very hot and then very cold.

  The killing of the two thugs who were in the act raping my client Dee Elsworth and killing me had been pure self-defence for what good that would do me if the police investigated.

  ‘That’s more rubbish,’ I spluttered. My voice sounded weak even to myself.

  ‘Don’t worry, David. I mention these events in your past life only to remind you of your own capacities.’

  ‘To blackmail me.’

  ‘Nothing could be further from my mind but you must consider my proposal.’

  ‘Or else?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing, I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone what I know. As I said I’m only reminding you of your own capacity.’

  ‘So I’m a professional killer?’

  ‘You’ve killed before and those two aren’t the only ones.’

  ‘God, have you made me your life’s work? I’ve only ever done what I had to do.’

  ‘I’ve followed your career. I know you’re a dangerous man and I need you on my side. The rewards will be considerable.’

  ‘So it’s bribery now?’

  ‘No, David, come what may, your future will be bright. I can promise that. You’ll be able to leave this business which your father tells me has lost its attraction for you.’

  ‘Very well, let’s consider your proposal. The target’s so powerful that he has many informants in the police, so sharp that he may already know you mean him harm, and he’s a ruthless killer. So nothing could be simpler than getting rid of him. Are you suggesting I invite him to a no-holds-barred cage fighting contest?’

  ‘There must be ways it could be done without alerting him.’

  ‘Oh, were you thinking on the lines of a bomb under his car? Or was it cyanide in his cocktail?’

  ‘Be serious!’

  ‘I am being serious, and may I remind you that whatever you think I’ve done in the past I’m married and my wife’s expecting our baby.’

  My scorn seemed to have an effect on the Right Honourable. His face looked more sunken than ever. I almost felt sorry for him.

  There was a long pause before he spoke again.

  ‘David, Paddy told me about the baby. Eileen must be delighted.’

  ‘She is.’

  ‘But … ’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I ask you to consider my proposal overnight and if you’re still unwilling to help me I want you to put me into contact with someone who can.’

  With that he rose from his chair and walked out of my room towards the exit. I was hopeful that if I said no in the morning that would be the end of this farrago.

  2

  Monday: Pimpernel Investigation 9.30 a.m.

  It wasn’t the end.

  Lew turned to the massive deposit safe, which sits like the Rock of Gibraltar against one wall, opened the upper box and dropped a small black leather notebook into it. He then slammed it shut.

  The action of closing the drawer causes the contents to fall into the main safe.

  The notebook was what he’d been reaching in his pocket for earlier. He smiled complacently at me.

  ‘That’s just in case your answer is yes. You’ll be able to go into action immediately.’

  ‘You old bugger!’ I whispered. It would take me minutes to open the main safe and stuff the notebook down his throat.

  He looked at his watch.

  The rain was still slashing down. He wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe there was time. The safe key was in my desk but I’d been outwitted. A gleaming silver Rolls Royce Phantom glided to a halt outside.

  Lew turned to me.

  ‘I shall expect your call at this time tomorrow. A single word will suffice.’

  I opened the outer door for him just as his grey uniformed chauffeur unfurled an umbrella. The Roller must have been circling the block throughout his visit. Was Lew advertising his call deliberately? Why hadn’t he slipped into the office wearing an old raincoat?

  I cursed silently while Miss Fothergill looked on. By popping the black notebook into the safe the old devil had bushwhacked me. Now if his candidate for extinction perished, there was incriminating evidence in my possession.

  I kicked the safe angrily. A pointless act, the pain in my foot was savage.

  Chubb, you are more sinned against than sinning, locksmith beloved by screws in Her Majesty’s Prisons, maker of burglar‑proof safes since the nineteenth century. This deposit safe was one of Chubb’s premier products. Insurers guaranteed its contents up to a hundred thousand pounds.

  Its presence in the office was down to betrayals I’d suffered at the hands of former staff in bygone days at Pimpernel Investigations.

  Now I was betrayed again. I struggled to suppress the surge of self pity.

  Rationality returned after a moment.

  Lew could only have learned about the thugs I’d shot from Dee Elsworth. She was the only person in the world apart from me who knew that I’d buried those two rapists.

  ‘Is everything all right, Mr Cunane?’ Fothergill asked. ‘I hope Sir Lew wasn’t bringing bad news.’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ I said, straightening up and trying to stand on my injured foot. ‘It’s just that his visit was unexpected.’

  I noticed that she had the office edition of ‘Who’s Who’ open on her desk. I limped back to my room, returned with the key, punched in the combination, opened the steel door and removed the notebook.

  I threw it down on my desk and stared at it for a long while as if expecting it to explode.

  It was a bomb. If I opened it and learned the name of the man Lew wanted dead my life would be changed irrevocably.

  My fingers twitched and crept towards the book. Then I made my mind up.


  What right did Lew have to turn my life upside down?

  I put the book in a padded envelope, sealed it with yards of Sellotape and took it back to the safe. He could have it back tomorrow.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right Mr Cunane?’ Fothergill asked. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. I could make a cup of tea if you like.’

  I made no comment, walked back into my room which suddenly seemed as confining as a prison cell, shut the door and poured another slug of Glenmorangie, a small one this time because I intended driving.

  Damn Sir Lew Greene.

  As a small child I’d stayed with Lew and his wife quite a number of times. I can still perfectly recall being entertained by two adults who hadn’t the slightest notion of how to deal with a small boy. Long intervals of total boredom linger in one’s childhood memories.

  On one embarrassing occasion I broke a china teacup and hid the pieces behind a sofa. On another I managed to wander off and get lost in their grounds.

  The Greenes lived in a huge house that could have accommodated a family of twenty with room to spare. I guess the idea was that having a child around would stimulate Magdalen’s fertility. If so it didn’t work.

  Magdalen Arabella Veronica Anderton-Weldsley came from a far more distinguished lineage than the Greenes or Cunanes, or so she believed. Her family were landed gentry. I’d gleaned from various hints dropped by Paddy and Eileen that her parents were none too pleased when their only surviving child married a descendant of Irish peasants even if he’d been to the same exclusive public school as Magdalen’s father and brothers and then to Cambridge. There’d been three older sons besides the much younger Magdalen but two were killed in the Second World War and the third in the auxiliary air force when his Meteor jet crashed into a hillside so the line ended with Magdalen.

  The whisky bit into the back of my throat. I shook my head as if trying to wake from a bad dream then I reached for the phone.

  A call to Dee Elsworth was out of the question but there was one other possible source of information.

  ‘Dad,’ I croaked when I was connected to my father.

  ‘Everything all right, Dave?’ he asked cheerily.

  ‘No, everything’s not all right,’ I snarled.

  ‘No need to bite my head off,’ Paddy replied evenly.

  ‘I need to see you at once.’

  ‘And I’m expected to drop everything? I’m tiling the bathroom and your mother’s got half the garden dug up. We can’t leave here.’

  ‘I’m on my way to you.’

  ‘Bloody marvellous, you can give me a hand with the grouting,’ he said sarcastically before putting the phone down.

  I put away the glasses and the whisky and went into the outer office. It was still raining. The sky was its usual leaden grey colour. ‘Who’s Who’ was back in its place with the reference books. I plucked my umbrella from the stand.

  I studied the demure Miss Fothergill for a moment.

  There was a problem.

  She’d broken a rule I’d set for my staff when I restarted Pimpernel.

  She’d shown curiosity about my private affairs and now knew something about my background.

  I don’t have permanent staff these days, certainly no one on salary who can develop ambitions about replacing me. It’s pathetic but that’s how I feel. My present ‘colleagues’ in the investigation game are ex‑coppers and the occasional amateur. I pay them per job and I pay well, so there’s never a shortage of helpers despite what some coppers still feel about me. I hire specialists as needed. For secretarial staff I rely on an agency.

  It’s costly but it guarantees anonymity and a degree of secrecy.

  My days of jolly banter with staff at Pimpernel Investigations are long over. Miss Fothergill was unusual in that she’d been at her post for three months. Normally I rotate my receptionists more frequently but it was getting to be a drag constantly explaining procedures to new people so she was still with me. Fothergill’s tight‑lipped manner had ensured her continuity of employment.

  ‘I’ll be out for the rest of the day,’ I told her. ‘I’m expecting the usual reports. Harold Millrace will probably arrive on the last minute, if not later. Anyway, as they come in make them sign for delivery, give them the usual receipt and bung their files in the deposit drawer of the safe. You have your key, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Cunane,’ she said, opening her drawer and brandishing the key. It was the key to the lockable deposit drawer normally kept open during the day, a fact that Sir Lew had just taken advantage of. Fothergill had the key to lock it if she went out for lunch or something. Even if it was left open, the main safe with its massive door was still secure.

  Miss Fothergill didn’t have the key or combination for that.

  Lew’s little black book was safe until I had a chance to return it to him.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll look at them tomorrow. Apart from that, lock up and leave at the normal time.’

  ‘Oh, I could hang on till Mr Millrace comes in if you like,’ she said obligingly.

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary. It’ll serve Millrace right if he has to make two trips and wait a day longer for his cheque.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she muttered in a discouraged tone.

  ‘If there’s anything urgent, you can get in touch on my mobile. Keep yourself busy by filing all the stuff on my desk and sorting the post when it finally arrives.’

  She nodded without speaking.

  As I walked to the car park I wondered if Fothergill’s two little slips, firstly looking Lew up in ‘Who’s Who’ and secondly volunteering for extra duty were enough for me to get rid of her. I decided not. I was the one who’d introduced Lew to her and they’d probably been chatting for quite a while before I came. She’d recovered well and buttoned her lip satisfactorily. That’s the big problem with staff in Manchester.

  They think they’re living in a soap opera and want to know all your business.

  Of course my smile free policy goes against the grain. But I’m succeeding in growing a hard shell.

  Prison does that for you.

  Cunane, man of mystery, that’s the image I’m looking for as far as the temps are concerned.

  Now Miss Fothergill, whose first name I couldn’t recall, knew all about my godfather and she’d seen him foil me with the notebook stunt.

  I put thoughts of her behind me as I threaded my grey Ford Mondeo down the narrow lane from the multi-storey and out onto Deansgate. The morning rush was over and I made good time reaching the motorway.

  3

  Monday: M60 motorway, clockwise section 11 a.m.

  I was still thinking about the business when I reached the orbital motorway. I didn’t need an economics guru to tell me that the country was in recession. Traffic was noticeably thinner.

  Thoughts of Lew Greene’s mysterious villain made me study my rear view mirror with care. If there was a tail I couldn’t spot it.

  Just to be on the safe side I zoomed off the motorway at Worsley and circled the roundabout twice.

  Back on the M60 I changed lanes several times. There was definitely no one following me and in any case when I turned off onto the M61 there was nothing to distinguish my Mondeo from the dozens of others driven by salesmen and mid level executives. I approached Bolton on the A666, the road to Hell as my father often jokes, then passed through the old mill town and reached the West Pennine Moors in record time.

  My parents’ home in a handloom weaver’s croft has been entirely rebuilt after the fire that almost destroyed it some years ago. The destruction was a blessing in disguise for Paddy. It’s given him the opportunity to deploy his construction skills on a large scale. The only fly in the ointment is that the rundown farm between his house and the main road is as dilapidated as ever. Dogs, cattle, and broken machinery lie about in a scene of chaos. It provides Paddy with something to grumble at.

  The cottage is perfectly positioned to catch the maximum daylight although a large oak tr
ee at one side casts shadows that would have been unwelcome to the weavers: built of the local limestone the building merges into the landscape. Where the old weavers once pegged out cloth to bleach in the sun there’s a large garden.

  I spotted my mother. She was wearing a battered old Barbour and a shapeless rain hat. She looked like a Russian peasant woman in the bad old days.

  The rain was keeping up; drizzle punctuated by heavy downpours, but even so Eileen was swinging a mattock at the unresponsive soil.

  I parked the car and hurried towards her. I snatched the tool out of her hand.

  ‘What is it with you two?’ I asked angrily. ‘Slavery was abolished a long time ago. You’re both rolling in money yet you can’t let go. You’re bashing the soil and he’s upstairs robbing a tradesman of a day’s work.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so silly Dave,’ Eileen said, giving me a peck on the cheek with frozen lips. ‘Just think, if we both drop dead from exhaustion, all this will be yours.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that!’ I said sharply.

  ‘It’s better for us to be working like this than toiling on a treadmill in a private gym like you and Jan,’ she replied with a smile. ‘It keeps us fit and it’s productive. I’m putting potatoes in here.’

  ‘The Irish famine was a long time ago,’ I muttered but I knew argument was useless.

  ‘Oh, come in and shut up,’ she said, ‘or at least stop complaining. I don’t ask you to give up your many dangerous activities.’

  ‘What?’ I exploded. ‘You never do anything but that, not that I have any dangerous activities nowadays.’

  ‘How’s dear Jan,’ she asked, changing the subject. ‘That dear sweet girl is trying so hard to be a good wife to you. I wonder if you value her enough.’

  This was tough to take from a woman who barely twelve calendar months previously had moved heaven and earth to marry me off to Kate McKenzie, daughter of an old friend of hers. Kate’s a good woman. She saved my life. She just isn’t the right woman for me.

  ‘Jan’s in good health,’ I said curtly. With my parents I’ve learned to take the rough with the smooth.

  ‘And the baby?’