The Wrong Man Read online

‘Thank you, Ellis. And to answer your question, I’ve been travelling. Mostly.’

  ‘Yeah, you said. Whereabouts?’

  ‘A few places. Stockholm. Addis Ababa. Patagonia.’

  Ellis nodded slowly, his eyes vacant. ‘That in Spain?’

  ‘No, Ellis, it’s the southernmost tip of South America. The last land mass before Antarctica, and one of the remotest parts of the world. There’s snow in the summer and temperatures can drop to minus twenty when the wind’s blowing the wrong way.’

  Ellis looked at him. ‘Sounds rubbish. Spain’s much warmer.’

  ‘Your level of insight knows no bounds, Ellis.’

  ‘Well it’s a bit of a weird place to go for a holiday.’

  Hardwick took a long sip of his drink. ‘It wasn’t a holiday.’

  Ellis looked at him, quizzical. ‘Why did you go there then?’

  ‘I had business to attend to.’

  ‘What, with eskimos?’

  ‘Eskimos are from the arctic and subarctic, Ellis.’

  Ellis shuffled slightly in his seat. ‘Alright. Well, whoever it is who lives in Patagonia.’

  ‘Patagonians?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I’ve no particular preference, but I think they’d prefer it.’

  ‘So what’s the appeal?’ Ellis asked.

  Hardwick sat in silence for a few moments, seemingly lost in thought. ‘History,’ he said, finally.

  ‘What, like fossils and stuff?’

  Hardwick nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Something like that.’

  ‘Come on, then. Tell me something interesting about the history of Patagonia.’

  ‘I think that would be rather dangerous, Ellis. You’ve already learned two things today. We wouldn’t want to push our luck, would we?’

  Ellis nudged Hardwick playfully. ‘Ah, come on Kempston. I can never learn too much. I’m like a sponge.’

  Hardwick leaned back slightly and looked Ellis up and down. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can see that.’

  Ellis just looked at him, his eyes wide open.

  ‘Alright,’ Hardwick said, eventually. ‘Did you know humans have inhabited Patagonia for thousands upon thousands of years? They’ve got archaeological findings going back to the thirteenth millennium BC. That’s potentially fifteen thousand years ago.’

  ‘Blimey. You’d’ve thought they’d have gone somewhere warmer by now.’

  ‘Also, the biggest dinosaur ever discovered was found in Patagonia. It weighed seventy-six tons.’

  ‘Crikey,’ Ellis said. ‘That’s nearly as much as Doug.’

  ‘Mmmm?’ the landlord said, having appeared, as if by magic, behind the pair.

  ‘Nothing,’ Ellis said, quickly.

  ‘You both enjoying the evening then, lads?’ Doug said, placing a hand on each of their shoulders.

  Hardwick forced a less than convincing smile. ‘Indeed.’

  3

  Hardwick wasn’t the sort of person who tended to get hangovers, but he had to admit his head felt a little fuzzy as he was woken the next morning by the ringing of his phone.

  There were times — not often — when he wished he had a mobile phone. But that was usually only when he was forced to make his way downstairs and into his living room to answer the vintage GPO bakelite phone on his side table.

  ‘Hardwick,’ he said, placing the receiver to his ear.

  ‘Kempston. It’s Doug, from the Freemason’s.’

  ‘Oh. Morning Doug,’ Hardwick said, desperately trying to remember what he’d done last night. He was fairly sure he hadn’t caused any trouble. Ellis, on the other hand, he couldn’t vouch for. Nor was he the man’s keeper.

  ‘Just wondered if you’d heard the news.’

  Hardwick let this hang in the air for a few moments. ‘Sorry, Doug. You’re going to need to be a little more specific than that.’

  ‘That’s a no, then,’ Doug said. Hardwick could almost hear the awkward shuffle at the other end of the line. ‘You remember last night, Rupert Pearson was stressing because his PA hadn’t turned up? Well, she was found dead in the early hours of the morning.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Murdered, according to the police. They were round here first thing, asking questions. It had been in her diary that she was spending the evening in the pub doing this bloody book launch for Pearson.’

  Hardwick squeezed his eyes shut and tried to force the headache away. ‘What makes them think she was murdered?’

  ‘That’s what I said. Apparently she was beaten pretty badly. She was found up at Tollinghill Country Park. By a dog walker, believe it or not.’

  He could. It was an old cliché that it was usually dog walkers who found dead bodies, but it was often true. After all, many killers tended to try to hide their victims’ bodies — usually in woods or undergrowth — and these were exactly the sorts of places dog walkers went in the dawn hours.

  ‘I see,’ Hardwick said, unsure what else to add. ‘Do they know when she died?’

  ‘I overheard that DI Warner bloke saying she was killed at ten past nine yesterday evening.’

  ‘That’s remarkably precise,’ Hardwick replied.

  ‘Yeah. Apparently the pathologist only narrowed it down to an hour or two, but then Warner noticed her watch had been smashed and broken in the attack, and had stopped at ten past nine. Bit of a giveaway, that.’

  ‘Well yes, it is rather.’

  ‘Sad, too, to think she was still alive while we were all stressing about the fact she hadn’t turned up. You were probably in the middle of doing your introductory bit while the poor girl was being bludgeoned to death.’

  ‘Well yes, I suppose so,’ Hardwick said.

  ‘Gets you off the hook at least,’ Doug added, his throaty laugh announcing years of cigarette smoking. ‘But get this. They’ve already made an arrest. Quick or what?’

  ‘Impressive,’ Hardwick said, unsure exactly what he was supposed to gain from this conversation.

  ‘One of my locals. Bloke by the name of Terry Cox. You know him.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Hardwick replied.

  ‘Yeah you do. Terry. You know Terry.’

  ‘Trust me, I don’t know anybody called Terry.’

  ‘Yeah you do. He’s in here all the time.’

  Hardwick sighed slightly. ‘He may well be, but I’m not.’

  ‘Terry and Veronica have been knocking around together recently. Past few months, anyway. They’ve mostly been over at the King’s Arms. It’s closer to her house.’

  ‘If he’s not been in your pub and I’ve not been in your pub, how do you expect me to know him?’ Hardwick asked.

  ‘He was in here yesterday afternoon. With her. Had a right old barney, they did. You must remember.’

  Hardwick thought back to yesterday afternoon, when he’d first gone into the Freemason’s Arms. He recalled a couple arguing in the street outside the pub as he went in, but hadn’t seen them come out of the Freemason’s. Was this the couple Doug was referring to?

  ‘Quite a small chap, is he? Shaved head, bomber jacket?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s Terry.’

  ‘And she had long, slightly curly ginger hair, taller than him, smartly dressed, Michael Kors handbag, mole on her left cheek?’

  ‘Got a much better look at her than you did at him, didn’t you?’

  ‘There was more to look at.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘No, I mean she had more distingui—’

  ‘But anyway, I thought you might like to know,’ Doug said, interrupting him.

  Hardwick raised his eyebrows slightly, as if Doug could actually see him over the phone. ‘I see. Pray tell why?’

  ‘Well, you like murder and stuff don’t you? Figured it was your sort of bag.’

  Doug’s comment struck Hardwick as both accurate and wildly inaccurate at the same time. It was true to say he had assisted in a few murderers being brought to justice over the past handful of years, and had grudgingly accepted
Ellis’s help in doing so.

  It had all started with the death of a stand-up comedian in the Freemason’s Arms a few years earlier. He and Ellis had solved the murder and helped bring the killer to justice, despite Detective Inspector Rob Warner having Hardwick thrown in a cell for interfering in his investigation.

  All in all, he’d caught four killers — all despite the ineptitude of the local constabulary on three occasions, and the Greek police on another. He couldn’t even have a holiday without having to solve a murder.

  He had, on more than one occasion, wondered if Ellis Flint was some sort of curse on him. Whenever Ellis popped up, there was a dead body and a murder to be solved. There was never any suspicion that Ellis might be responsible — the man couldn’t even tie his own shoelaces — but every time he met the man he secretly wondered if this might be his last day on Earth.

  It was something that often made him feel uneasy, as well it might. But right now there was something else niggling away at him; a thought he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but which deeply troubled him.

  4

  The fresh air went some way towards clearing the last of Hardwick’s hangover as he walked through the centre of Tollinghill on his journey from the Old Rectory to the Freemason’s Arms.

  He hadn’t been drinking much recently, and the previous day’s brief afternoon had turned into a long night. That tended to happen when Ellis Flint was around, and mere hours later he found himself heading back to the Freemason’s, where he’d arranged to meet Ellis.

  A thought had been troubling him ever since he’d received the call from Doug earlier that day. A thought he couldn’t quite shake from his mind.

  ‘Your seat’s still warm, Kempston,’ Ellis said, chuckling to himself as Hardwick entered the pub.

  Hardwick barely noticed the comment, tied up as he was in his own thoughts.

  ‘The usual?’ Doug Lilley asked.

  ‘Uh, no,’ Hardwick replied. ‘I think I’ll have a coffee.’

  ‘Don’t think you will. We don’t do coffee.’

  Hardwick looked at the landlord for a moment. ‘Right. What have you got?’

  ‘Got a coffee porter on here,’ Doug replied, locking his fingers round one of the handpulls. ‘Only five percent.’

  ‘Five percent what?’ Hardwick asked, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Alcohol.’

  ‘I know. I was trying to make a… Actually, don’t worry. I’ll have a half of that, then. If nothing else, it might help as hair of the dog.’

  ‘You sure you don’t want to try that limited edition whisky?’ Doug asked.

  ‘Not at forty-six pounds a go, I don’t,’

  ‘You get home alright last night, Kempston?’ Ellis asked, before taking a sip of his own beer.

  ‘No, Ellis. I died.’

  ‘Oh well. Can’t beat bad luck, can you?’

  ‘We’ll have no more deaths around here, thank you very much,’ Doug said, plonking a full pint of dark beer in front of Kempston.

  ‘I asked for a half,’ Hardwick said, looking at the landlord.

  ‘My hand slipped. Three eighty, please.’

  Hardwick handed over his money and tried to divert conversation towards the matter in hand.

  ‘Veronica Campbell,’ Doug said over his shoulder, whilst putting the money in the till. ‘That was her name.’

  It was as if Doug could read Hardwick’s mind. ‘And she was the woman who was arguing outside the pub when I came in yesterday?’

  ‘Quite possibly. Sounds like her, anyway. And the way you described Terry on the phone definitely sounds like him. Weird bloke.’

  ‘Weird, but not a murderer?’ Hardwick asked.

  Doug smiled at him. ‘You took the words right out of my mouth.’

  ‘What is it, Kempston?’ Ellis asked. ‘Don’t you think it was him?’

  Hardwick took a deep breath, then sighed. ‘I don’t know. I don’t have any of the facts, and I’ve never spoken to either of them. All I do know is I’ve looked into the eyes of many murderers in my life. There’s something there. Something I can’t describe, and can’t quite put my finger on. It’s almost like a dull sparkle. Just… something. When I crossed the road to come in here last night, I made eye contact with him. I vaguely recognised him, perhaps from in here. I could tell they were arguing, and we held eyes for a second or two, maybe more. Call me mad for having nothing but a hunch, but if you ask me, I didn’t look into the eyes of a murderer.’

  There was silence for a few moments before Ellis spoke.

  ‘I don’t know why they don’t just do away with all the major crime teams and just get you to go around looking in people’s eyes, Kempston.’

  ‘Don’t be facetious,’ Hardwick replied. ‘I told you it was only a hunch. But, more often than not, my hunches turn out to be correct.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Doug said, nodding slowly. ‘I know Terry. He drinks in here quite a bit. Or did until he met that Veronica bird. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nasty piece of work. He deserves to go down for something, alright. You should see the way he talks to people. The way he treated her. The way he spoke to her yesterday.’

  ‘Did you hear what they were arguing about?’ Hardwick asked.

  ‘Bits and bobs. I don’t know what sparked it off. They were sitting over there by the fire. Wasn’t particularly busy yesterday afternoon, and I could see the conversation getting a bit more animated. I could tell from the body language they weren’t exactly whispering sweet nothings into each other’s ears. Then they got a bit louder and she mentioned something about one of them having to do something to earn some money. Sounded to me like she was having a go at him for not working and just wanting to go out drinking all the time. She’d probably mentioned she was going to have to go home and get ready for the launch in the evening. Knowing Terry, he probably told her to sack it off and stay out drinking.’

  ‘And that’s what it was all over?’ Hardwick asked.

  Doug shrugged. ‘I dunno. Like I say, I don’t know how it started, but that’s when it started getting loud enough for me to hear. Next thing I know, he’s calling her a selfish bitch, telling her he doesn’t know why he bothers trying to spend time with her. All that sort of stuff. They’d both had a couple of drinks by then, so it didn’t take much to get the fire going.’

  ‘And she was planning to work that evening?’

  ‘Well, if you call it work. She only had to introduce old Rupert whatsisface and blab on about how brilliant his new book is. People are always drinking at these things. It’s not exactly a corporate board meeting, is it?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Hardwick said, feeling the last remnants of his headache disappearing.

  ‘But if you ask me, it’s no bad thing Terry being locked up. He deserves to go down for something. It’s about time he got what was coming to him.’

  ‘Not a popular chap, then?’ Hardwick asked.

  ‘You could say that. He could start a fight in an empty room, Terry.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but it doesn’t mean it’s right that he goes down for murder.’

  ‘No, but if he didn’t do it they won’t send him down will they?’

  Hardwick wished this were true. He’d seen far too many injustices in his time to know that the police didn’t always get it right. Far from it, when it came to the local police force in Tollinghill.

  And injustices weren’t something Hardwick could stand. He’d seen first-hand how they could ruin lives and blight whole families. It wasn’t something he could ever stand by and let happen, no matter how much he had to put his own life on the line.

  What he needed was more information. Something that could tell him about the background to Veronica Campbell’s death.

  ‘Where does Rupert Pearson live, exactly?’ Hardwick asked Doug.

  ‘Out on the Shafford road, just past the old petrol station before you leave town. You can’t miss it. It’s the only one up there. Big black gates at the front.’

 
Hardwick nodded slowly. ‘Ellis, drink up. We’re going to go and have a word with somebody.’

  ‘Who?’ Ellis asked, grabbing his glass and gulping down three mouthfuls.

  ‘The person who perhaps knew Veronica Campbell best, Ellis. We’re going to see Rupert Pearson.’

  5

  The walk from the Freemason’s Arms to Rupert Pearson’s house took far longer than Ellis Flint thought it had any right to. Then again, Ellis Flint wasn’t one for walking at the best of times.

  The road heading north out of Tollinghill seemed fairly steep in the car, but it was practically Himalayan on foot.

  Ellis huffed and puffed as Hardwick explained a little about what he knew about Pearson.

  ‘To all intents and purposes, he’s been pretty successful, Ellis. He’s about the only one of the so-called “literary” writers who’s been able to sustain a regular output of work over the past few years. Although, of course, I take issue with the term “literary”. It’s snobbery at the best of times, but verging on the ridiculous when referring to the sort of tripe Rupert Pearson produces.’

  Ellis didn’t know whether to be more surprised at Kempston Hardwick calling someone else a snob, or the fact that the man could march at this speed and still manage to string a sentence together without sounding even slightly out of breath.

  ‘Yeah?’ he puffed, realising that Mrs F’s diet hadn’t exactly improved his fitness.

  ‘Would you believe, Ellis, there’s even talk that he’ll be knighted in the next New Year’s Honours list? Can you imagine? Sir Rupert Pearson. For services to literature, no less! It makes a mockery of the whole system, if you ask me. But then again the British public have never exactly been prime arbiters of what constitutes good taste.’

  ‘No,’ Ellis said — just about.

  ‘So, let’s make sure we’re clear on everything before we get there. Veronica Campbell dies at 9.10pm, yes?’ Hardwick didn’t wait for Ellis to reply. ‘We can then discount everyone who was in the Freemason’s Arms, as you and I both know those people to have somewhere close to a hundred alibis. Terry Cox, of course, is not one of those. Fifteen love to DI Warner. But that doesn’t mean Cox is guilty. Presumably the eminent Detective Inspector has more to go on than that, but we shall cross that bridge when we come to it. Personally, it seems to me as though there’s something sitting just under the surface which needs uncovering. Something I can almost see, and which doesn’t feel quite… Yes. Interesting.’