Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005
- Автор: Dean David, Dempsey Timothy F.
- Год: 2005
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN 1054-8122
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005». Краткое содержание книги:
“I warned him... But did he listen?”
“Warned him?”
“He was asking questions of the wrong people. This pub may be for lowlifes like me, but there’s contacts to be had if you want them. The Elm is a conduit to some very dangerous people.”
Conduit. Again Yellich had the impression that Gabrielle Ingham had had an education and had fallen a long way from somewhere to have fetched up in The Elm.
“There are some dangerous people in this small city. He was wanting to talk to them for his book. What was it he said he wanted? ‘Copy’... that was it.” She took another drink of her lager, gulping it like a sailor would. “I mean, you don’t do that, not to these guys. These guys are seriously heavy.”
Yellich groaned. The naivety of youth, as with the youngster who went to Northern Ireland to try to make sense of the “troubles” for himself, so he could better understand them. Went hitchhiking round the province... eventually got into the wrong car, with his English accent, and was later found by the roadside with a bullet in his head. “Do you know to whom he was talking?”
Gabrielle Ingham shook her head, vigorously.
“Is it dangerous for you to talk?”
“Yes. They know you’re a cop... I could get a kicking if they think I’m giving you information. Not from anyone here, but word will get to where word will get to... A lot of tourists visit York — they never see this side of the railway line.”
“You’ve had an education, I think?” Yellich couldn’t resist the question.
“I’m a nurse... a staff nurse... Well, I have the qualifications... Right now I am unemployed, on sickness benefit — long term. I won’t work again. I sold my house and pay rent now... released a lot of money for this.” She tapped the side of her beer glass. “And these.” She tapped the packet of cigarettes. “I’m on the way out, forty-five years old, so I want to make it as smooth as possible. Tuberculosis,” she said matter-of-factly. “Used to be called consumption... Seems a more accurate name to me... Folk would visit spas to take ‘the cure,’ knowing there was no cure, just remission now and again.”
Yellich nodded sympathetically. He had heard that the disease had reemerged in the late twentieth century and had taken a toehold by the beginning of the twenty-first. Not yet of epidemic proportions, but it had a toehold nonetheless. “What specifically was Charlie Pimlott asking about?”
“The drug culture... the heroin trade. I mean, you don’t ask questions of those people.”
“I see.”
“Where can I reach you?”
“Micklegate Bar Police Station. Do you have information?”
“Might do. I have done little of use in my life, and if I am to be planted soon, I think I’d like to do at least one good thing. And Charles was a nice lad... he didn’t deserve to be murdered so young, even if he did invite it by his stupidity.”
“If it is Charlie. No positive ID yet.”
“Well, his family live in the south, in the outer London area, somewhere in the Home Counties. The university will have his home address.”
“Where did he live?”
“Above the greengrocers on the corner of this street. There is a small flat above the shop, they rent it out. Charlie took the tenancy a few weeks ago... immersing himself in the street to get authentic detail for his book. So if I do have information, who do I ask for?”
“Yellich, DS Yellich.”
“I’ll remember that name. We’ll have to meet someplace, can’t meet here and I can’t be seen walking into the police station... I’ll be a watched woman for a few weeks now. I don’t want my face carved or my ribs kicked to pieces. And that’s the least I can expect.”
“Understood.”
Yellich left The Elm and walked down the street, pulling his collar up as protection against the chill easterly. A slight drizzle fell. The street was typical Holgate: narrow, lined with soot-blackened terraces where washing would be strung across the street on a good drying day. Not, as Gabrielle Ingham had said, the York the tourists visit. Yellich came to the greengrocers. He entered it. The greengrocer was a healthy-looking man who seemed to love fresh vegetables. His younger female assistant also looked healthy amid the carrots and potatoes and the mushrooms. Yellich had the impression that they were an item, not just proprietor and assistant, but man and wife... lovers at the very least.
“How can I help you, sir?” The man smiled.
“By letting me look at the flat I understand you let out, the one above the shop.”
“Police?”
“Yes.” Yellich showed his ID.
“If the lad’s in trouble, I know nothing of it. I told him I want no drugs, I don’t even let the room to smokers, but he seemed all right.”
“He’s not in any trouble. If he is who we think he is, he’s dead.”
The man jolted and glanced at the young woman, who gasped. Then he recovered his composure. “I’ll get the spare key.” He left the counter and returned a few minutes later with two keys strung onto a Volkswagen key fob. “The entrance is at the rear of the shop. Round the corner, down the alley. Metal staircase... Careful of the staircase, it’s slippery in the wet.”
Chaos. Violence. Something happened here, Yellich said to himself as he stepped across the threshold, not requiring the keys because the door of the flat was lying ajar. Inside the flat was a scene of destruction, of smashed furniture, of upturned tables and lamp stands. Yellich reached into his pocket and took out his mobile. He phoned DCI Hennessey. “Better get here, boss. If this is the youth’s flat, his name was Charles Pimlott and he didn’t go without a struggle.”
“He definitely didn’t, did he?” Hennessey looked round the small bedsit. The signs of struggle were everywhere, as if the fight that had taken place in the flat had spilled into every corner of every room — bed on its side in the bedroom, plates smashed in the small kitchen. A photograph on the mantelpiece showed a young man and woman side by side somewhere in the sun. The young man in the photograph was clearly the same young man who had been found earlier that day lying facedown in the frost in Askham Bogs. A name on a Social Security card, also on the mantelpiece, was that of Charles Pimlott. “His home address will be here somewhere. I’ll contact his parents when I find it.”
“Believed to come from the south,” Yellich said. “I’ll search for it once SOCO have finished.” A camera flashed. A second SOCO officer dusted for prints with a small squirrel-hair brush. “There are no witnesses that I can find. Had a chat with the greengrocer who lets the flat... all he could say is that it must have happened one evening or one Sunday daytime. He lives elsewhere in the city and doesn’t check on the flat, calls just once a week for his rent. The post was behind the door. The earliest postmark was four days ago, thirty-first of December. No delivery on New Year’s Day, so it happened sometime before New Year’s Day, if he received something in the post each day.”
“Big ‘if,’ Yellich,” Hennessey growled. “I don’t think we’ll pin the time of this attack by the post.”
“No, boss... just musing. Found someone in the local pub. I think she has information... but she’s frightened. But she also seems angry about something. I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t contact us. Gabrielle Ingham, by name.”
TUESDAY, 4TH JANUARY. MORNING.
It never got easier. It was the walk with the next of kin, the clutching, trembling hope-against-hope attitude, the drawing back of the curtain, the wailing, the sobbing as the person lying behind the glass, dressed in bandages and, by some trick of light and shade, looking as if they are floating peacefully in space, is recognised as their own. In this particular case, Yellich found it easier than most, but it was still hard. The Pimlotts revealed themselves to be of the English middle class; there was a brief gasp, a slight sob, but beyond that, their emotions were contained.