Deadly Serious Read online

  He had never been in the shop before, but it seemed fairly obviously that the couple manning the post office section and the main counter were the husband and wife team named on the facia, ‘Reed St Thomas Stores. Props: Stuart and Joy Russell’. Listening as he lingered near the birthday card stand he realized the Russells were not local people. From the midlands he guessed, possibly captivated by the charm of the village when on holiday. They were probably now too busy to enjoy it. He waited until the shop was quiet then approached Mr Russell, who was behind the main counter.

  He broached the subject carefully, produced the newspaper and pointed out the insertion. The effect was immediate, the shopkeeper stopped in the middle of writing names on pre-ordered magazines and focused all his attention on Cannon.

  ‘You be all right for a minute, Joy?’ he called over, flourishing the paper and giving her a meaningful nod, then beckoned Cannon to follow him through a door to the back of the shop.

  Here was part kitchen, part stockroom and part office. The price one paid for living on the job, Cannon thought.

  ‘You’re not on any of my delivery rounds, are you?’ Stuart Russell asked.

  ‘No, my name’s John Cannon, I keep The Trap public house …’

  ‘Ah! I know of you,’ Russell said, ‘former Met officer, and your partner the same.’

  Cannon nodded the correctness of this, adding, ‘and I’m a friend of Jim Maddern.’

  ‘Police Sergeant Maddern?’ Russell asked and gave him a questioning look.

  ‘You obviously didn’t read the insertion in the paper I gave you,’ Cannon said.

  ‘Well, no, I just saw the black printing,’ the newsagent said, spreading the page out on his table. ‘Hell!’ he exclaimed, ‘that’s more serious. I’ve had another complaint….’ He picked up a folded sheet of newspaper from the windowsill and handed it to Cannon. There was no name at the top of the death column in this paper, but in the same black print: “The third member of the same family to die”.

  ‘So this newspaper went to …’

  ‘A pensioner who lives on her own.’ Russell shook his head in vexation. ‘I asked the delivery boy, but he swears he knows nothing about it, and never left his delivery bag anywhere unattended.’ He looked thoughtful, indicated the two newspapers. ‘The only thing is, the lady is on the same round as Sergeant Maddern’s cottage.’

  ‘Would the boy’s name be Jakes?’ Cannon asked.

  ‘No,’ Russell said, shaking his head, puzzled, ‘I’ve no boy of that name, or anything like it. Not a name I have on my books at all. The lad who delivers that round is named Smithson, Danny Smithson, lives across the way, 24 Snyder Crescent.’

  ‘A local family, or local connections?’

  ‘Not as far as I know, in fact when they moved in on that estate just before Christmas,’ he cast a derogatory thumb in the direction of a block of old council houses the area was not proud of, ‘the talk was that they were one of these resettled families put into the house because it had stood empty so long.’

  ‘So any idea why Sergeant Maddern should call your paperboy Jakes?’

  Russell laughed. ‘Probably after some character on telly,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  Cannon, remembering the newspapers retrieved from Maddern’s bin, and his own two-year career as a delivery boy in London’s East End, asked, ‘You don’t mark each newspaper with a house number or name?’

  ‘Not on our local rag, most people take it. It’s a good paper full of community news. I just write on the extras and the boys have to keep on eye on where these are for as they go along. Sometimes they slip up, and there’ll be one left in the bag. I just give them a stern-faced reminder and put it in again for the next delivery.’

  ‘How many houses between the lady who received this,’ Cannon tapped the sheet from the windowsill, ‘and Sergeant Maddern’s?’

  Russell looked at him with fresh interest. ‘That’s a point.’ He leaned on the table and tapped the fingers of his right hand, thinking and counting. ‘Five,’ he said.

  ‘And where does the round start and finish?’

  Russell took up a pencil and a used envelope, explaining as he drew. ‘Here’s the shop, and the council house estate, then back the way you came from the Sergeant’s house. The round starts here on the main road, goes along towards the coast a bit, there are six cottages along Sea Lane, and Sergeant Maddern’s is the last paper he would deliver—’

  A sharp knocking on the door to the shop broke into his summary. ‘Wife’s getting busy, I’ll have to go,’ Russell said, ‘but tell me what to do about this. You’ve come instead of—’

  ‘Yes,’ he said before the newsagent got to names.

  ‘Can I leave it with you for now, and….’ Russell was on his way back into the shop as he spoke.

  ‘Yes,’ Cannon repeated, following and edging his way through half a dozen customers, ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  When he arrived back at The Trap, Liz was anxious to hear everything. He spread all the newspapers over the kitchen table, those with the missing sections and the three with the printed inserts. ‘So,’ he said, ‘four out of five of these newspapers went to the right person, Maddern, and probably the newspaper he took with him held another message.’

  ‘Another threat,’ Liz corrected, ‘and Margaret thought he’d already left when he was here having a meal,’ she said.

  ‘Not only that, he rang to tell her he had arrived in Hampshire when he was here.’

  ‘He may not even be on a course,’ she speculated. ‘Pity Helen’s on maternity leave, otherwise we could just have asked.’

  ‘Why not?’ Cannon said, picking up the phone. Moments later, he was asking for Inspector Jones with Liz’s scowling disapproval.

  ‘Jones?’ she mouthed.

  ‘Ah, Inspector, John Cannon here—’ he was clearly interrupted from the other end, ‘yes, that’s the one,’ he said and winked at Liz. ‘I just need to speak to Sergeant Maddern … no, not a police matter, hope you don’t mind me ringing the station.’

  Liz could hear Jones’s raised voice, though not his words.

  ‘I thought engine-driver, rather than the oilcan,’ Cannon answered jovially, but Liz watched his face change as he listened, and after making an apology that sounded genuine enough, he put down the phone and sat solemnly absorbing what he had just been told.

  ‘Well?’ Liz queried.

  Cannon looked directly at her, then said, ‘Jim Maddern is on annual leave.’

  Liz blinked, sat back in her chair. ‘Leave? But …’ she began, then gestured to the despoiled newspaper columns, ‘and to deceive his wife, it must be something really serious, deadly serious.’

  ‘Something he dare not involve the police in,’ John paused, ‘or his friends. Something, or someone, so threatening …’

  ‘He’s trying to run away from,’ Liz suggested.

  ‘No, something he’s trying to deal with, and …’ then he added with complete certainty, ‘he came here to ask for our help.’

  ‘But, he didn’t!’

  ‘Not in the end, no,’ John agreed, again reviewing the evening, but this time recalling other customers. There had been a lively group of young farmers and their girlfriends who had called in on the way to their annual Valentine Day’s dance – animated young men, pretty, vivacious girls. He wondered if Jim had been reminded of his daughters, and anxiety had overcome the need to confide in him. Big, life-changing decisions often turned on simple unrelated events. Had it been this that had prompted the stinging remark, ‘Not you of all people’? ‘He decided I was too risky a friend to confide in,’ Cannon murmured.

  She stopped herself saying that she could well understand how a serving police sergeant might feel, asking instead, ‘So what will you do?’

  ‘Help him, whether he likes it or not.’

  ‘But what can you do?’ she interrupted, and knew immediately it was a mistake.

  ‘Think first,’ he said, giving her a withering look, whi
le wondering just what he might be getting into.

  She wanted to make a smart-arse rejoinder like that’d be a first, but she knew that wasn’t even true; what she was afraid of was that once more their lives were going to become pawns in someone else’s game.

  ‘For starters,’ Cannon went on, ‘we can be fairly sure the newsboy, Danny Smithson, knows nothing about the insertions …’

  ‘Or he’d have made sure he delivered them all to the right address,’ Liz finished for him.

  ‘Right,’ Cannon nodded. ‘Good to have you aboard.’ He went on before she could make any kind of retaliation. ‘So Danny must have stopped somewhere, left his bag unattended at some point. We need to watch him deliver his papers – and we need to do it today, this afternoon.’

  ‘This afternoon we have the brewery coming with the fortnightly delivery,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I don’t want to waste any time,’ he said. ‘Maddern’s reactions seem to say that whatever’s going on can’t wait. I think we can leave Alamat to deal with the brewery.’ Not for the first time, he thought it had been an inspired piece of trust and guesswork that had made him go after the slightly built Croatian, living part on the streets, part in a hostel, in the nearby market town of Boston. They had found him work and lodgings in the new accommodation being finished in The Trap’s old stable-block, where Alamat was now busy painting and decorating. Looking too feeble for fieldwork he had previously made a meagre living doing translations for his fellow countrymen. His cheerfulness and willingness more than made up for his size. He was quite simply an asset, a help they wondered how they had ever managed without.

  He knew Liz was not overjoyed as they left for Reed St Thomas, timing their arrival some ten minutes before the school bus returned the children to the village. He had gone through the round as drawn by the newsagent. Once Danny Smithson had gone into the shop to collect his newspapers Cannon would leave Liz in the car and watch the boy until he left the main road, when Liz would sit in the car and watch him on the coast road towards the last five cottages.

  ‘That’ll be him,’ John said some fifteen minutes later, after a whole gang of children had gone straight from the bus into the village shop – some were immediately sent out again, with Russell supervising numbers from his doorstep. Then a boy came out with a news-bag on one shoulder, satchel on the other. He also answered Russell’s description of ‘a well-put-together lad, good shoulders on him for a thirteen-year-old’. Cannon let the boy cross the green and make his way towards the estate before he got out of the car and Liz drove off to take up her station further along the newsround.

  He followed the boy on to Snyder Crescent, using his old technique of setting himself an artificial goal: to walk aimlessly could draw attention. So now he walked, without haste, but as if making for the bus shelter at the far end of the street. He heard the noise of a vehicle turning into the estate behind him, and it seemed he was not the only one watching Danny Smithson, for a white Mercedes van drew up alongside the boy.

  Cannon was near enough to see that the boy recognized whoever was driving. The passenger door was pushed open, and after a few words, Danny lifted the newspaper bag on his shoulder as if to show he had a job to do, but then he shrugged and got in anyway.

  The van was immediately put into an acute three-point turn and driven out of the estate, making a left turn at the end of the road. Cannon had a brief glimpse of the driver as they passed – big, dark, grim-faced, hunched or rounded shoulders, he mentally recorded. As the van disappeared he saw he had reached number 24. He had a good look at Danny Smithson’s home as he passed, though there was nothing much to see, a half brick and half shabby white-concreted house, where neither the state of the nets nor the badly hung curtains upstairs looked inviting. One thing Danny’s mother was not, was house-proud.

  Once back on the green he took out his mobile and called Liz, told her what had happened and gave a description of the van and the number. ‘He may be just helping the boy to deliver his papers—’

  ‘—or taking the opportunity to write in them,’ she said. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Stay where you are. I’ll walk to you. I’d just like to check that the boy is OK and delivering his papers. I didn’t much like the look of the van driver.’

  It took Cannon ten minutes to reach Liz. ‘Have you seen him?’ he asked as he got in beside her.

  ‘No, not a sign.’

  ‘That feels a bit worrying,’ he was saying when she interrupted.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Liz looked with rapt attention in the rear-view mirror. ‘There’s a white van coming up behind us, and it’s a Merc, don’t look round, its coming past us now.’

  They sat and watched the van turn into Sea Lane. Liz had only just reached forward to switch her engine on, when the vehicle came back. It slowed before it reached them and something was thrown from the driver’s window, then it gathered speed, and they heard the screech of tyres as it negotiated the corner.

  Cannon was out the car and running across to retrieve the object. He displayed the school satchel to Liz, then turned and ran on towards Sea Lane and the last five houses on Danny Smithson’s round. Liz put the car in gear and followed.

  As Cannon rounded the bend for a second he did not realize the balled-up shape on the grass verge was the boy. ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed, as the familiar surge of dread, concern, and adrenalin, swept over him. He thought for a moment the youngster was either dead or unconscious, but stooping close he could see the boy was breathing, and put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  ‘No, don’t,’ the boy moaned, balling himself tighter, ‘I won’t say anything.’

  ‘You’re all right, he’s gone,’ Cannon told him, then was startled as the boy’s eyes shot open.

  ‘Who’re you? Leave me alone,’ he said, shrugging off Cannon’s hand. ‘I fell down. I’m all right. Leave me alone.’ There was an edge of tears in his voice but the boy mastered it.

  Cannon’s heart went out to him, he’d seen plenty such city kids bullied by gangs. They learned early not to cry. There were no marks on the face, but as the boy uncurled experimentally Cannon would have liked to have seen the state of his torso, his stomach and kidneys; these were favourite punishment areas. He was becoming convinced the beating this boy had suffered was the work of an expert: swift, effective, frighteners applied, and no visible evidence. But why?

  Liz was out of the car now and by their side.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ Danny Smithson repeated, trying to struggle to his feet, but the still-full newspaper bag, now over one shoulder and across his chest, made it difficult.

  ‘Here,’ Liz said, bent and deftly drew the strap up and over his head, removing the bag, before the boy could protest. ‘Now try.’

  ‘OK,’ Cannon said, ‘I think we should help you deliver this lot.’

  ‘We’ll be done in half the time,’ Liz endorsed. ‘You lean on the car here, or sit in it if you like, and tell us which houses to go to.’

  ‘Then we can drop you back at the shop,’ Cannon urged and taking silence as agreement, he asked, ‘Are the papers in any kind of order?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘It’s the end cottage, then the one next to it, miss one then the next three,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll do those,’ Cannon told Liz. ‘You turn the car round.’

  Cannon walked up the path to Margaret Maddern’s door and sheltered by the tiny porch, rang the bell long and hard, then made a great show, in case the boy could see, of carefully folding the paper as if to put it through the letterbox. Fortunately Margaret answered the door quickly, looked surprised but pleased to see him and stepped back, inviting him inside.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I need you to give Jim a message when he rings tonight. Can you tell him that the paperboy he calls Jakes has been beaten up and I need to speak to him about it.’

  ‘What’s happened, Mum?’ Grace Maddern, her youngest daughter, who Cannon guessed must be about thirteen, came up behind her mot
her, and Louise, who would be fifteen, came rattling down the stairs and joined the group in the doorway, smiling, greeting Cannon.

  ‘Not Dad is it?’ Louise asked. ‘He never ought to be sent on courses at his age.’

  ‘He’s not that old,’ her mother retorted.

  ‘It’s not, is it?’ Grace looked from her mother to Cannon, her face now solemn. ‘It’s not Dad?’

  Then all three looked at Cannon, two daughters and a wife, anxious faces all thinking of the most important man in their lives.

  ‘No, no, the paperboy’s had a fall in the lane, he’s all right, but I’m just helping him finish his round.’ He handed the paper to their mother and nodded to her, the nod incorporating a reminder about the message, hers acknowledging that she had not forgotten.

  He said his goodbyes, turned away, still able to hear the girls questioning, and Louise repeating what they had all thought. ‘I still don’t think Dad’s well.’

  ‘He should take some of his annual leave and have a holiday,’ Grace added.

  Cannon walked away burdened with the thought that he already knew more than Maddern’s wife and daughters. Given to the occasional fanciful idea, he also recognized he was leaving true family love behind him, and had fear sitting huddled in the back of Liz’s car.

  Chapter 3

  The first time the phone rang it was a wrong number. The second, as Cannon was about to go through to open The Trap for the evening’s business, was a young woman who told him her name was Tina, she understood he had money worries, and she could consolidate all his debts so they were no longer a problem.

  ‘My problem,’ he told her, ‘is you. Get off my line.’

  ‘At least she’s doing a job,’ Liz said mildly.

  The third time, Liz answered and immediately handed the phone over, ‘Jim,’ she said.

  ‘Jim, glad you’ve rung. I …’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Maddern interrupted, gruff, impatient. ‘Margaret said—’