Boiling Point Read online

  ‘I know that there’s currently a vacancy in your marital bed.’

  ‘Ah! Dave, now you’re almost coming close to sarcasm. More of this and my ears will start to burn.’

  ‘Tell me about the Carlyles,’ I said desperately. ‘That was why I was insane enough to phone you in the first place.’

  ‘Capitalist raptors! What more can I say? They have more business interests than a pig has rashers. Surely you’ve heard of the rugby league team they own. The patriarch, Brandon Carlyle, is on the main board at Alhambra TV and if ever there was an unacceptable face of the market economy, he is it!’

  ‘Rugby league – you mean the Pendlebury Piledrivers?’

  ‘The same. Dear, rich Brandon bought them in a rare fit of generosity, or more precisely when he thought rugby league was going to run at a profit. Since then he’s put so little money into the club that they’re facing relegation. They don’t even have a single Aussie in their line-up. The word is that Brandon hopes to show a profit by selling their ground to a supermarket chain. That would be typical of his lust for lucre. I suffer from it every day in my work.’

  ‘But where does Charles fit in? And Marti?’

  ‘Questions, questions. Are you too lazy to do your own research? I know I’m supposed to be the one who finds things out on behalf of the public, but that’s another of the things that Brandon Carlyle wants to put a stop to . . .’

  ‘He wants to shut you down?’

  ‘He does indeed, the insufferable ape! If he had his way the local news would be a mere slogan-trading session wedged between jingles advertising his companies. This upstart former ale-pourer and tavern keeper’s son fondly imagines that he and his pack of bespoke-tailored marketing freaks know how to run a TV company. With that viper, if you’re not gaining you’re failing.’

  ‘Ale-pourer? Tavern keeper’s son?’

  ‘He was brought up in a pub.’

  ‘And that debars him from running a TV company?’

  ‘So sorry, Pimpo-boy! I forgot your own lowly origins. All Brandon Carlyle possesses is the ability to juggle the figures on a balance sheet so that they come out in his favour, and he’s not even very bright at that. He employs a veritable posse of hangers-onto get all the sums right.’

  ‘All right, so he’s a schmuck, but what about the son?’

  ‘That weak-willed brat!’

  ‘He didn’t look very weak willed when I saw him.’

  ‘Charles is the eldest of five sons and of the bunch he is the one I prefer, which isn’t saying that I like him. The other four are positively pre-human, almost cannibalistic, in their taste for the flesh of anyone who dares to raise cultural issues. There are five daughters too – Brandon likes to do things on a grand scale. Philistines, the lot of them!’

  ‘Clyde, this is very interesting, but why isn’t all this stuff more widely known?’

  ‘Dear lad, your innocence warms my withered old heart. Who do you think controls the news media?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘The facts are known among the cognoscenti such as myself, but Brandon has always shown a feline grace when it comes to avoiding publicity. He has his cats’-paws to do his bidding. Few of his misdeeds are given a public airing. The rugby team is an uncharacteristic failure.’

  ‘So why was Charles Carlyle battering his wife in a public place?’

  ‘Why indeed? Why do you imagine that I came running to this hovel if not to find that out? I intended to use the material to crack open the carapace of lies that the Carlyle family have surrounded themselves with.’

  ‘In the public interest or the Clyde Harrow interest?’

  ‘How are they separate?’

  ‘Right, but there must be a reason for the battering and then the crazy car chase. Carlyle must have got Hefflin and Olley on the job almost as soon as the missus managed to escape from him.’

  ‘That, dear boy, is precisely what I came round here to find out. Just as Samson used the jawbone of a donkey to slay a thousand Philistines I intended to use you to put a spoke in Brandon Carlyle’s wheel.’

  ‘Thanks very much, Clyde. But while you’re comparing yourself with Samson, don’t forget what happened to him when he met Delilah.’

  ‘Believe me, young man, I have already lost my locks in the service of my art but I will gladly immolate myself beneath the pillars of a temple if that is the price of victory over the Carlyle empire.’

  6

  IN THE FOLLOWING weeks the fat man’s crack about me being too lazy to do my own research bored its way through my defences like a teredo worm gnawing at a ship’s timbers. Expansion of the firm meant that I was spending more of my time directing the operations of others than at the coal face. So, I made an effort to find out what I could about the ‘Carlyle Empire’. It turned out that Clyde was exaggerating as usual. I spent several mind-numbing sessions in the Central Reference Library scanning the microfilmed financial pages. There were occasional mentions of Brandon Carlyle and his part in various boardroom battles and takeovers, but I could find nothing that was either creditable or discreditable – certainly nothing that would warrant slaying with the jawbone of a donkey or even a hostile profile in the press. A union leader moaned that Carlyle had put more men on the dole queue than Margaret Thatcher, but that was about it as far as criticism went. The only current stuff about the mogul concerned his involvement with the Pendlebury Piledrivers, which was exciting the sports writers, but then rugby league is very much a minority interest.

  There was some information on Tony Hefflin, however. Shortly after his visit to me he was retired from the Force on health grounds – while under investigation.

  That was it. I left it there, buried but not forgotten.

  It all came back to me one Saturday evening when I was in a Manchester restaurant with my parents and Janine.

  We were in a small French place just off Albert Square adjacent to Bootle Street police HQ, Paddy’s old stamping ground.

  ‘It was a hard world in those days . . .’

  ‘We have moved on since the Middle Ages, you know,’ Janine countered, looking up from her langoustines and squaring her jaw at the old copper. ‘Half the convictions were secured by phoney evidence with a nudge and a funny handshake for the judge.’

  Paddy laughed. ‘Ninety-nine point nine per cent of the blackguards we nailed richly deserved it.’

  My mother, Eileen, hastened to keep the peace. ‘Do you mind not talking shop?’

  ‘Yes, love,’ Paddy said obediently.

  Just then the calm of the restaurant was shattered by a penetrating noise. It was that unmistakable, eldritch laugh that I’d heard at Tarn – the loud jollity followed by the noisy blocked drain. Startled diners lowered knives and forks and scanned the room for the source. The sudden avalanche of sound had come from a table in the corner, which seated three women. One, with her back to me, had red hair.

  ‘Some people,’ Janine muttered, whether at the laughter or at Paddy’s remark wasn’t clear. She looked over at the three in the corner but made no further comment. She obviously didn’t recognise the female she’d last seen sprawled over the sofa in my private office. I did. It was definitely Marti. I felt a certain interest – it’s not every day that you rescue someone. I couldn’t help glancing over.

  A few moments later, though, I was concentrating on a piece of camembert when the laugher laid her hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t go without speaking. You’re the man who helped me that day at Tarn, aren’t you? The detective agency? It wasn’t one of my better days.’

  I turned and looked up into startlingly green eyes, memory coming into sharp focus. She smiled warmly at me. There wasn’t the faintest trace of embarrassment.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said hastily, trying to push my chair back and stand up.

  Before I could move she swiftly bent forward and kissed me on the cheek.

  ‘Thanks for everything. You were wonderful. My husband and his fam
ily have everyone at Tarn trained to look the other way when they kick over the traces.’

  Then she was gone, leaving only a faint trace of expensive perfume to tell anyone that she’d ever been there.

  ‘What was that about?’ Janine demanded emphatically, as I awkwardly reseated myself.

  ‘You know. I told you . . . the woman at Tarn that day you had the quarrel with your editor over advocating mass chemical castration.’

  ‘That floozy! And you still don’t know who she is. I’ll ask the waiter.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ Paddy said. ‘I know exactly who she is. In fact I can tell you a good part of her life story.’

  Looking at Janine’s angry face I decided that a show of ignorance was the best card to play.

  ‘Go on then,’ Janine urged.

  ‘You’re not involved with the woman in any way, are you, David?’ Paddy asked with his usual full-bored bluntness. Here we were, happy family together, and he was asking me if I was having it off with another woman. With a family like mine who needs enemies?

  ‘I’ve been through all this with Janine. The only time I’ve ever laid eyes on her was when I saved her from a flop into the mud at Tarn Golf Club. The only thing I didn’t tell you, Janine, was that when I arrived back at the office that afternoon she’d gone but the grieving husband came looking for her, with a copper and a minder in tow.’

  ‘That sounds about right for the Carlyles,’ Paddy murmured. ‘They never let go of any of their possessions without a struggle.’

  ‘Carlyles?’ Janine echoed. ‘Not the Carlyles? The Cheshire bigwigs?’

  ‘The same,’ Paddy growled, ‘and you’d both be well advised to steer clear of the lot of them.’

  ‘Tell all!’ she ordered.

  ‘She’s Vince King’s kid.’

  Janine and I must have looked blank.

  ‘Vince King, you know – the safe-cracker and murderer.’

  Still nothing registered with either of us.

  ‘Such is fame,’ Paddy said in exasperation. ‘King was one of the worst villains we ever had on this patch. Mind you, he operated all over the country. It didn’t matter where it was, if a skilful safe-cracking went down, his name was always at the top of the list of five or six possibles. Most of the early petermen were Geordies who learned how to handle gelignite in the pits. King learned in the army, but he came from a crime family. Nobody’s ever worked out exactly how he pulled off some of the jobs he was involved in, but there was nothing he couldn’t open.’

  At this point Paddy exhaled through clenched teeth as if reliving a painful experience.

  ‘Don’t say any more,’ Eileen counselled. ‘You know it’s bad for your blood pressure.’

  ‘Oh, to hell with that. These two will only ferret it out anyway. King’s career came to an abrupt end when he was found unconscious outside a GPO facility down by the old Pomona Docks in Salford. There were two corpses inside the building, in the security vault: one his accomplice, Musgrave, and the other a policeman, Detective Constable Fred Fullalove. Naturally King swore blind that he’d been fitted up. Don’t they all? It was true that he hadn’t used violence before, but there was his military experience to tell against him.’

  ‘What military experience?’ Janine asked, almost in a whisper.

  ‘He’d been in the SAS, although back in those days the regiment wasn’t so widely known as it is now. At the trial the prosecution was able to establish that he’d had extensive military experience, and that helped to tip the balance against him.’

  ‘Were you involved in the case?’ I asked.

  ‘Not that particular one – it was in Salford, and I was head of CID here in the city of Manchester itself. Mick Jones, the man who arrested King, had worked for me . . .’

  ‘Stop it!’ Eileen said firmly. ‘I’m not going through all that again . . . sleepless nights and bad-tempered days.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Janine said, ‘am I missing something?’

  ‘What you’re missing is that Mick Jones was certainly the most bent copper to serve in Manchester. He was the original so-called “one bad apple in the barrel”,’ Eileen said sharply, putting her arm round Paddy. ‘Though if you ask me there were some barrels that only had one good apple. My dear silly husband here almost worked himself into an early grave trying to convict Jones, and what was the result? The high-ups let Jones slip off to Marbella to enjoy his pension and his ill-gotten gains. He’d never have managed it without help from friends in high places.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Paddy said.

  ‘I know that every time you got in sight of finding the evidence people were tipped off and warned to keep their mouths shut. Why, I had Archie Sinclair practically weeping in frustration all over my kitchen, and you know how tight-lipped he is.’

  ‘Sinclair? The current Assistant Chief Constable?’ Janine asked, opening her eyes wide.

  My parents nodded but didn’t speak. They both seemed to feel that they’d said too much.

  ‘Oh, you can’t clam up now,’ Janine moaned, but they did.

  It was five minutes later when he was sipping a glass of brandy that Paddy opened up again.

  ‘When King was locked up it turned out that he had a common-law wife – a hard-faced German piece she was – and a kid. That was her who was just drooling over David; the kid, that is. I’m not quite sure of all the details but this child, Marti, ended up in a children’s home when the mother cleared off back to Germany. Over the next few years Marti’s name cropped up in missing person reports when she absconded from the home in search of her mother. She spent a lot of time in Germany, but the German police shipped her back here every time they found her. In the end she landed up in a semi-secure facility near Leeds that made Dotheboys Hall look like a holiday camp. Her own mother turned her in. She didn’t want the bother and Marti hadn’t got German nationality, you see. Then something odd happened. Marti was fostered by one of the wealthiest families in Cheshire, the Carlyles. No one could work out just why old Brandon Carlyle should have gone to the trouble. I was keen to investigate but I was promoted at about that time and it was out of my hands then.’

  ‘So that’s how this ex-con’s daughter married into the Carlyle family,’ Janine said.

  ‘Not ex-con – King’s still inside.’

  ‘But he must have done twenty years by now.’

  ‘He has, and he’ll do more as long as there’s a Police Federation.’

  ‘This is good stuff!’ Janine exclaimed. ‘Dave! Why didn’t you tell me that What’s-his-name Carlyle was brawling with his wife in a public car park? I might have got a decent diary piece out of it.’

  ‘It’s all very sad, Janine,’ my mother said. ‘That girl’s had enough trouble in her life without you dragging her name through the press.’

  ‘Oh, it’s stale news by now. But still, Dave . . .’

  ‘Your memory’s very selective, Janine. You didn’t believe me at the time.’

  ‘Oh, f . . . er . . . fiddlesticks . . . I’d have believed you if you’d told me it was one of the Carlyle family involved.’

  ‘You didn’t let me get that far, Janine. He told me his name, bold as brass – Charles Carlyle. It was as if he was entitled to knock women about in public places.’

  ‘Charlie – Brandon’s eldest son and heir,’ Paddy commented.

  ‘How come you know so much about the Carlyles?’

  ‘You don’t make as much money as Brandon Carlyle without some questions being asked. His father ran a small pub in Ancoats, and a right thieves’ kitchen it was too. There have always been questions about just how Brandon managed to lay his hands on enough capital to get started in business.’

  ‘The way you say that tells me that you think you know,’ I said.

  ‘Him and his father, Ted, ran one of the biggest fencing operations in Manchester and Salford. It was a joke. Only about two or three barrels of beer were delivered to that pub every week, but father and son were loaded. They were more
careful than some, they salted their money away, and of course there was nothing in writing and no phone conversations. When Ted died Brandon went legitimate . . .’

  ‘And what is his business?’ Janine demanded.

  ‘You read the financial papers, don’t you? He’s into just about everything now, but back in the sixties when I ran the ruler over him once or twice he was the big name in one-armed bandits in pubs. There was more than a little difficulty with rival outfits – vans mysteriously burnt out, shotguns going off in the night – but Brandon was too slippery a customer to ever have his collar felt, though I dare say he should have had. Any road up, he went off to New York and founded the Carlyle Corporation. He spent years taking over American companies and selling off the profitable bits, and then he came back here and is still at it.’

  ‘He doesn’t have anything to do with that golf club out at Tarn, does he?’

  ‘Hold on, Dave. I honestly don’t know what he owns, but you should steer clear of him and his family. I don’t think he’s overflowing with goodwill towards me and he’d enjoy doing a nasty to you. Anyway, lad, we didn’t come here to talk about the Carlyles. I heard quite enough about them when I was in the job – always just within the law they were, and with an army of lawyers ready if any bold plod raised an eyebrow in their direction.’

  I looked at Paddy. He’d obviously had his fingers burned at one time or another by Brandon Carlyle. His expression was an invitation to change the subject, so we did.

  Janine returned to the topic on the way home. ‘You had it off with that Marti, didn’t you, Dave?’

  I almost swerved the car onto the pavement.

  ‘How many more times do I have to tell you that the woman was paralytic drunk?’

  ‘Not so paralytic that she couldn’t skip out of your office.’

  ‘Look, Janine, do you think I’m suffering from some kind of medical condition? Satyriasis, isn’t it? I don’t have to have sexual intercourse with every woman I meet.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you?’

  ‘No!’ I snapped.

  A spell of heavy breathing and silence followed this exchange. Deansgate was clogged with slow-moving traffic and I had plenty of time to think of something to say. As usual it was the wrong thing.