"It sounds like our man. What does he look like?"
The description could have been read from Maggie's report. "Yuppy meets football hooligan' was his final assessment.
"It's him," I said. "He's moved away from Burnley and changed his name."
"If it is the same bloke he's a nasty piece of work. He was only about twenty, but he worked as a heavy a repo man — for a firm of bailiffs, or something."
"This one works for an estate agency called Homes 4U. He's a branch manager."
"That's them! Homes 4U. Estate agency is putting it a bit high, I'd say. They're not above calling round to slow payers with the baseball bats."
"Great. You've been a big help, Pete. We're bringing him in after the New Year, so it'll be good to have some background on him."
"I haven't finished yet," he said. "I left a few months later, but I've a feeling that he pulled something similar after I'd gone. The man to talk to is called Herbert Mathews. He was our collator but he retired on ill health about a year ago. I'll give you his address. If it breathed in Burnley, Herbert knew about it."
We chatted for a while, agreeing that we ought to get together, knowing we wouldn't. We'd said our farewells when a thought struck him.
"Charlie!" he shouted as I was replacing the phone.
"Yeah."
"I just thought of something. I believe you told Padiham Road that this rape was on Christmas Eve?"
"That's right."
"Well, the one I investigated was on a bank holiday Monday." "So?"
"So you know what tonight is? Maybe there's a pattern."
"Shit!"
"Quite."
"Happy New Year."
"Thanks. And you."
Chapter Four
We rang off and I sat thinking for a while. Sparky's wife Shirley, answered when I dialled their number.
"Hi, Shirl," I said. "Would you be terribly disappointed if I didn't come round? I'm falling asleep and don't think I'll be very good company."
"I'll be a teeny bit disappointed," she replied, 'but my teenage daughter will be devastated."
"Sophie? I thought she was at a party."
"She just rang to say it was boring, so Dave's gone to fetch her. At least, that was her excuse. She'll be upset when you're not here."
"I doubt it," I said.
"Charlie," Shirley began, 'don't tell me you haven't noticed that your goddaughter has an almighty crush on "Er, no, can't say I have."
"Well she has."
"Oh heck. What do we do about it?"
"Nothing. We're hoping she'll see the light. Are you sure you can't come round?"
I wanted to. These days invitations are rarer than apprenticeships at the Job Centre. I nearly made a joke about having me for a son-in-law, but decided not to. It was a delicate subject. "Listen, Shirley," I said. "Don't tell Sparky Dave but something's cropped up. I'm going to the nick for an hour, see if I can help, that's all."
"Oh, right. So what shall I say when they come in?"
"Tell Sophie that I'm curled up in front of the fire with a mug of cocoa and the latest Jeffrey Archer. That should do it."
"Aversion therapy."
"Precisely."
"Charlie?"
"Mmm."
"Thanks, love. And be careful."
The town centre was crowded with groups of young people, singing and swaying, spilling into the road as they toured the pubs. Some wore funny hats or strands of streamers round their necks. Nobody wore a coat. They breed 'em tough, these days. The wind had swung again, away from the Pole, but it was still thinner than orphanage custard.
Fortunately, alcohol is a good antidote. Tests have shown that vast quantities of it slopping around in the stomach are equivalent to wearing two vests and a jumper.
I eased the car through the crowd, towards the Tap and Spile. The sexes were still segregated, but the time for mass pairing-off was rapidly approaching. A group of giggling girls sharing hardly enough clothes for one staggered into the road. I stopped and waved them across, and the one who got the blouse blew me a kiss. A party of young men in T-shirts shouted at them. Love was in the air, empathy was running high, but it could all change at the drop of a lager bottle or a misunderstood come-on. It was just a matter of time.
Darryl's silver Mondeo wasn't in the Tap's car park. If he had any sense he'd have used a taxi, tonight of all nights. I eased out into the street again and worked my way round most of the town-centre pubs, without finding him. Uniform branch were out in force, but I didn't speak with them.
Once I was clear of the throng I hot-wheeled it to the fancy canal-side development where Darryl lived. It had started life as a wool warehouse, a century and a half ago, when buildings were made to last but there was still something in the budget for ornamentation. It escaped the vandals in the town hall by the thickness of a small bundle of tenners and was now a highly desirable block of up market apartments, complete with security gates and private moorings. Most of the parking spots were occupied, but not by Darryl's car. I noticed that some of his neighbours were doing a lot better than he was.
I telephoned the nick and asked for all cars to look out for him. If anyone radioed in with a contact, tell them, I said, to check if he was with a woman. If he was, they had to ruin his chances. I can be a heartless so-and-so. If Charlie's not getting it, nobody gets it.
I drove back to the Tap. The streets were quieter, with everybody inside the pubs, pouring the last desperate drinks down their throats, as if prohibition came in on the chime of midnight. A minibus of women pulled out, leaving a big parking space for me.
I'd forgotten how crowded pubs could be. Did I once enjoy this? I couldn't believe I ever had. It was shoulder to shoulder, with a pall of smoke hugging the ceiling. At my height I was getting a super dose I looked around and started to fight my way to one of the anterooms that branched off the main saloon, in search of a drink, or some air.
The landlord was behind the main bar, serving drinks to the four-deep throng like a robot. An order would be shouted at him or one of his staff and a tenner passed across. Pints were pulled and a handful of coins given back. Then on to the next customer. Nobody checked their change. The sumo wrestler was dressed in red, her hair piled impossibly high. She looked as if she should have been standing at the far end of a bowling alley.
It was marginally quieter in the far room, except for the constant procession to the toilets. I yelled an order for a pint of lager over someone's head. He turned indignantly, found himself staring at my chest and decided to wait. The barman passed me a can.
"We've no glasses," he shouted. "Does that make it cheaper?" "No."
I handed him a pound coin and said: "Call it right." "It's eighty pence short," he replied. "They're only seventy-five pence in Safeway's," I protested.
"Then go do your drinking there," he told me. I gave him another pound and turned away. A bunch of women were filing into the ladies', handbags at the ready. I stood back for them and found a piece of wall to lean on. Darryl might have been there, but I couldn't see anyone who fitted the picture I'd formed of him in my mind. Sometimes, that's a misleading thing to do. I wiped the top of the can with my shirt cuff and took a swig. It was warm.
The first of the women emerged from the loo and stood waiting for her friends, so they could form a united assault on the wall of bodies they had to negotiate. I looked, then looked again. She had the kind of figure and face that turn brave men into quiche eaters. I sidled towards her, noting that she looked nervous, out of her natural habitat, in that crowded place.
"Anyone would think it was New Year's Eve," I said, pulling up alongside her. Might as well go straight into the clever stuff.