Shooting Elvis (3 page)

I noted the way she’d wrapped the wire around each thumb and then the direction she’d twisted it to make it secure.

‘Can I take it off now?’ she asked as I closed my notebook.

‘Yes, thank you. That was a big help.’

‘Did I do it the same as him?’

‘Not quite.’

‘Oh. So what does that prove?’

‘It proves that Sonia Thornton is unique, but I already knew that.’ I placed my hand on the back of her neck, letting her short hair run through my fingers, and moved my face closer to hers. ‘What did you think of the run?’ I asked.

She smiled at me, resting her forehead against mine, and something churned in my stomach. Sonia smiles like a spring morning, when the daffodils are in full bloom, and when it’s just for me I wonder what I’ve done to deserve such riches. ‘It was good,’ she said. ‘I felt…I don’t know, I haven’t the vocabulary, but running does something to me. I feel as if I’m flying, as if I could take off and soar. Thanks, Charlie. I’d forgotten the joy of it, but tonight I felt it again. You made it possible, brought it back to me.’

‘It’s been a long day,’ I whispered. ‘I think we should have an early…’ But by then the room was falling end over end, and I never got to tell her what we should have an early one of.

Alfred Armitage was a bit of a nuisance, I learned next morning when we gathered in the classroom at the nick. His wife had died in 1997, less than a year after he retired, and since then he’d turned to alcohol for solace and gone into a slow decline. Four landlords in the vicinity of his home told how he would come into their pubs early in the evening and slowly get drunk. Then he’d start berating customers about anything that he’d read in the papers – asylum seekers, lenient penalties for murderers, hospital waiting lists – all the usual right-wing scare-mongering that the tabloids indulge in. Most of the customers agreed with him, the landlords said, but they came out of the house
to get away from it, not have it rammed down their throats night after night. Two of them had asked him to either moderate his opinions or find somewhere else to drink.

‘So had he enemies?’ I asked.

Apparently not. He was regarded as harmless, they assured me, and some of his drinking companions took delight in winding him up. He was good for a laugh, at his own expense.

‘Do we know a cause of death, yet, boss?’ somebody wondered.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Sorry, haven’t you got it? The PM results say he died of heart failure, probably caused by electric shock. He was discovered at
ten-thirty
yesterday morning and had been dead for ten to fifteen hours, so the time of death was sometime between seven-thirty and half-past midnight. What did the door-to-doors find?’

‘Not much, boss. He was well liked when his wife was alive but he’d driven most of their friends away. One or two seem ripe for a good gossip about him once they get over the shock, so we’ll call on them again when we’ve finished here.’

‘That’s the way. And let’s see if we can find someone from Ellis and Newbold’s who knew him. Right, now I want four volunteers. You four will do.’ I pointed to four DCs on the front row. ‘And you can help with this,’ I said, looking at Dave Sparkington.

I pulled the four lengths of orange cable out of
my briefcase and handed one to each of the DCs. The wires were already bared for them. ‘Here’s what I want you to do.’

Five minutes later they were sitting there like the Three Wise Monkeys, plus a friend, with their thumbs wired together. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s see if we can find a winner. You keep the score, Dave.’ I examined the wires on the first DC’s hands. ‘Number one,’ I announced. ‘Left hand, over the thumb, twisted clockwise. Right hand, over the thumb…’

‘Wait a minute,’ Dave protested. ‘Did you say clockwise?’

I was holding a new stick of chalk. I broke it in two and offered him half. ‘Do it on the board,’ I told him. ‘Make a chart. You know what we’re looking for.’

When he was ready we started again. ‘Left hand, over the thumb, clockwise.’

Dave wrote it on the board. When he’d finished I said, ‘Right hand, over the thumb, anti-clockwise. Number two. Left hand, under the thumb, clockwise. Right hand…’

When it was done we all looked at the chart for several minutes, not sure if it made any sense. No fingerprints were found on the cable or the timer, so we had to assess whatever we could.

‘What does it show?’ I asked.

Jeff Caton raised a finger.

‘Go on, Jeff,’ I invited.

‘Well, two of them put the wire over their thumbs and two of them put it under, which is not a big help. But they all twisted the wires similarly: clockwise on the left thumb; anti-clockwise on the right.’

Jeff had seen the report we’d done of our first findings, knew what I was getting at, but the Wise Monkeys hadn’t.

‘How was it done on the body?’ one of them asked.

I thought about it, long and hard. Everything pointed at a suicide. There was nothing to suggest that he’d been murdered. He hadn’t been robbed; it would be a particularly sadistic way to kill someone; he didn’t fit any profile of murder victims.

Except… How many times had I said that?

‘On the body,’ I began, ‘both wires were twisted the same way. Clockwise. So where does that leave us?’

‘Clockwise is the way all the wires were twisted by the right hand,’ Jeff informed us. ‘I presume our volunteers are all right-handed.’ They nodded and mumbled their agreement. ‘So it looks as if each wire on the body was fixed by a right hand.’

‘Which means what?’

‘He was ambidextrous,’ someone suggested.

‘There’s always a clever sod,’ I responded, flicking my piece of chalk at the offender.

‘Which means he had some assistance,’ Jeff said.

‘Exactly. In other words, boys and girls, this is looking like a murder enquiry. So let’s go to it.’

‘Can we take these off now?’ one of the monkeys asked, proffering his hands.

‘Not yet,’ I told him. ‘For the next part of the experiment I need one of you to volunteer to be plugged in…’

The man with shiny shoes washed his hands after buffing the shoes to a brilliant glow and went upstairs, to the spare bedroom-cum-office where he kept his mementos. His patience had been rewarded. Tuesday morning Radio Leeds had reported the death of an unnamed man by electrocution in Heckley and it made the local TV news in the evening. Wednesday, the
Heckley Gazette
made it their front-page feature and a couple of tabloids gave it a mention. The man with shiny shoes bought all the papers and read them as eagerly as a wannabee pop star.

He reached up to a shelf above his desk and lifted a scrapbook off a pile of similar volumes. He opened the book at the first blank page and placed the carefully prepared newspaper cuttings on it, moving them around until they fitted nicely. As the story had spread to page 2 of the
Heckley Gazette
he’d had to buy two papers. The nationals had covered the story briefly and flippantly, more for the curiosity value of the modus operandi than for any possible criminal content or feelings for the
victim. When he was satisfied with the layout he tacked the flimsy sheets down with a Pritt Stick and then secured them more permanently with Scotch magic tape, running the back of his thumbnail over the tape to make it invisible. The untimely death of Alfred Armitage had now taken its place amongst his collection of newspaper cuttings of murders and rapes that stretched back over twenty years. Alfred was an impostor, not worthy of appearing alongside such exalted company, but the man with shiny shoes smiled as he closed the book: it was early days, yet.

He finished his breakfast of Kellogg’s Fruit ’n Fibre, wholewheat toast and marmalade and coffee, and rinsed his plate, bowl, cup, knife and spoon under the hot tap. They could be left to dry naturally. He drove fifteen miles in the early morning traffic to the motorway services and dialled a number that he had written on an old
pay-and
-display ticket. Just as he thought the answering machine might chime in a breathless male voice said, ‘Hello.’

‘Have you seen the papers?’

‘Yes.’

‘You owe me
£
500.’

‘I know.’

‘Here’s what you do.’

When he’d delivered the message he found his car again, did a u-turn at the next junction and drove the fifteen miles back to town, back to work.

‘Assisted suicide,’ Mr Wood stated, placing a copy of the
Heckley Gazette
in front of me. ‘That’s what they’re saying it could be, and my money’s on it.’

‘I know, Gilbert,’ I replied. ‘We’re considering it, but as he appears to have been in good health and relatively sound of mind, if it was assisted suicide it’s almost as good as murder or unlawful killing. The enquiry is the same.’

‘What about contacting the organisations that help with these things?’

‘Maggie’s on with it, but they’re hardly likely to hold up their hands. They work outside the law. There’s a professor at Leeds University who’s a founder member of Die-When-You-Like, or whatever they’re called. The Euthanasia Society, that’s it. He wouldn’t disclose if Armitage had been in contact with them, but he said that electrocution was not one of their recommended methods.’

While Alfred had been on the dissecting table,
waiting for his appointment with the pathologist’s bone saw, the undertaker had done some work on his face, strictly under the pathologist’s supervision. He’d replaced the dentures, applied a tasteful touch of Max Factor where necessary and closed the eyes. Our photographer had taken a series of mug shots and I had an envelope full of them on my desk. Sometimes we ask a police artist to do a drawing from them of the victim’s face, for showing to witnesses, and sometimes I do it myself. It’s more respectful than using an actual photo, doesn’t upset any relatives. I’d intended doing a drawing of Alfred, but hadn’t had the time. I pulled a photo from the envelope and studied it.

Alfred had a comedian’s face. It was long, with a long jaw and a long nose. His ears were long, stretching down the sides of his face like wardrobe doors. In a different career it could have made him a fortune. As it was, it probably caused him a lifetime of piss-taking and embarrassment. His hair didn’t help. He’d kept it all, but even that was an unkind cut. It was as wiry as pan scrubbers, piled up on top of his head in a tangled, lopsided mass, accentuating his head’s longness. I felt sorry for him.

‘So what’s your next move?’ Gilbert asked.

‘We’re locating the people who used the same pubs as him and asking about his acquaintances, movements, anything that might be relevant. Robert has traced some names from Ellis and
Newbold’s. One of them lives down on Rastrick Road, so I’ve arranged to see him at ten. He’s still unemployed.’

‘Good. Good. Keep me informed. So how’s the jogging going? I’ve heard all about it.’

I laughed. ‘Who from?’

‘Never you mind. Is this the real thing?’

‘Your golfing friends. You should stick to fishing, Gilbert. There’s less opportunity for gossip.’

‘You’ve been seen out twice this week. It must be love.’

‘I’m just her coach, that’s all.’

‘And I’m the Duchess of York. You’re a lucky devil, Charlie. A lucky devil.’

‘Call me Simon,’ he said, after he’d unplugged the lawn mower I’d caught him using. I admired the striped square of grass in front of his semi and wondered what I was doing wrong. We shook hands and he said, ‘Inside or out?’

‘Let’s sit outside,’ I suggested. There was a garden seat under a window, his borders were a blaze of colour and the sun was shining. A blackbird landed on the newly cut lawn, hoping to find a freshly chopped worm, saw us and flew off, protesting loudly. The only discordant note was the family of painted gnomes gathered around a tiny pond.

‘Want to buy one?’ he asked with a laugh when he realised I was staring at them.

‘Um, not if you don’t mind,’ I replied.

‘Awful, aren’t they? They’re another of my
get-rich
initiatives that didn’t take off. Concrete gnomes. I took them to a few car boot sales, but when I did the figures I was losing about 50p per gnome. And that didn’t include my time.’

I took in the neatly edged grass, the carefully banked flowers and the low stone wall with tiny alpine plants growing along its top. It had all been carefully planned. ‘The garden’s brilliant,’ I said. ‘Can’t you find something in that line?’

‘Nothing permanent, and I’ve said that I wouldn’t work for anyone else again. But it’s difficult going self-employed. If you earn a bit of money you have to sign off and lose your benefits. Then, if the work dries up, you have to sign on again. You lose a fortnight’s benefits every time. There’s no encouragement to make the effort.’

‘Does your wife work?’

‘School dinners. That’s all.’

‘It’s a shame, Simon, and I don’t know what to suggest. Now, what can you tell me about Alfred Armitage?’

Simon, I discovered, had started work at Ellis and Newbold’s straight from school in 1990, which made him about thirty now. Alfred was the storekeeper, and as part of his training Simon had spent a month in the stores, working with him.

‘He was a queer bloke,’ Simon said. ‘I didn’t like him. He was moody, and seemed to resent me being
there. And he was always eating. He used to sit at his desk in the corner, his back to the office, nibbling at a sandwich and sipping tea from a flask. All I did was sweep up. I’d have thought he’d have me stocktaking or something, but he never did.’

‘Was he particularly friendly with anyone at the factory?’ I asked, but Simon shook his head.

‘Did he have any enemies?’

‘He didn’t have any anything,’ he replied. ‘He came to work, did his job and went home. The stores were open from ten till two-thirty and if you didn’t have a note signed by the foreman you couldn’t have anything out. The rest of the day he spent on paperwork and stocktaking. He was a stickler for procedure. Nobody had a good word for him, but they reluctantly agreed he was doing his job, protecting Mr Newbold’s assets.’