Born Guilty - Reginald Hill

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talk.’

      ‘You be careful,’ she said. ‘OK. Here it is. This war criminals in Britain thing has been rumbling on for years now. Since way back when, a combined task force from the Home Office who’ve got the records and the Yard who’ve got the investigatory know-how, has been digging deep to see if in fact there is anyone living here it would be safe to prosecute. Opinion both in and outside the House is divided between those who think that no prosecution could be safe, either legally or ethnically, and those who think the bastards should be pursued to the ends of the earth or their lives, whichever comes first.’

      ‘How do you feel?’ asked Joe.

      ‘Let’s save that for sometime when I’ve got some time,’ she said. ‘For the moment, as one of your great predecessors said, just the facts, Joe, just the facts. Of course, as this is an official government enquiry and highly classified, it’s got more leaks than a Liberian tanker. It seems they’ve got it down to three main groups. First is a handful of highly probables. Second is a larger number of pretty possibles, and the third is a still larger group of could-be-worth-a-closer-looks.’

      ‘And Taras Kovalko’s on one of these lists?’ said Joe unhappily. ‘Which one?’

      ‘Just the third,’ said Butcher. It should have sounded more reassuring than it did.

      ‘And it’s definitely him?’

      ‘Piers’s informant says there’s a Manchester address crossed out with a note, moved to Luton area.’

      ‘Can’t be very important if they don’t have the exact address,’ said Joe.

      ‘Don’t fool yourself. There’ll be a file with the Hackers’ address in it somewhere.’

      ‘A file? Hey, that makes it sound real heavy. Surely no one’s that bothered about this third list?’

      ‘You’re right, that’s what Piers says. But he also says if someone official has decided to take a closer look at your Mr Kovalko, that bumps him right up out of list three into list two at the least. Sorry, Joe. And that’s all Piers was able to get with a couple of phone calls. Any more will be word of mouth in the Turkish baths stuff. So, have we got a deal?’

      ‘I suppose so,’ said Joe in a depressed voice. ‘I mean, yes, of course we have. I make a bargain, I stick to it. Don’t know how I’m going to set about it but I’ll try to take a look at this randy schoolmaster of yours.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Butcher. ‘Didn’t I say? Not a schoolmaster exactly.’

      It took Joe a moment to register this.

      ‘You mean, a lady teacher?’ he said aghast. ‘But women don’t do things like that!’

      Butcher sighed and said, ‘I’d need notice of that remark to decide if it’s sexist or not. Listen, Joe. Don’t be deceived. Anything a man can do, a woman can be cleverer at, and this Georgina Woodbine is a real operator. Couple of years back there was a Grandison girl, Eileen Montgomery, fell off an edge during a school expedition to the Peak District. There were rumours of emotional upset, suicide attempt, and so on, but the teacher in charge, deputy head Georgie Woodbine, came out squeaky clean. So take care. It’s the same in a comp as in any business. You don’t get to the top without knowing how to cover your tracks with other people’s careers.’

      But only one word of all this was really registering with Joe.

      ‘Woodbine?’ he said. ‘You keep on saying Woodbine. Nothing to do with …’

      He didn’t even like to voice the idea. But Butcher had no such qualms.

      ‘Oh yes,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Georgina Woodbine, dearly beloved wife of Detective Chief Inspector, no, I beg his pardon, Superintendent Willie Woodbine. Didn’t I mention it? Sorry, Joe. It must have slipped my mind.’

       5

      Luton on a bright autumn morning, with the impartial sun gilding the tower of St Monkey’s, the dome of the Sikh temple, and the Clint Eastwood inflatable above Dirty Harry’s, was not a bad place to be, but Joe felt little of his customary filial pride as he drove to the office.

      ‘Whitey,’ he said, ‘there has to be something better than investigating things I don’t want to investigate for clients who ain’t going to pay. What say we run away to sea?’

      The cat sleeping on the passenger seat opened the eye in the white eye patch which, luckily or unluckily depending where you got your hangups, stopped him from being completely black, and fixed Joe with a gaze which said, you’re on your own, sailor!

      Maybe I set my sights too high, thought Joe. Maybe if I devoted myself to begging packets of cheese and onion crisps and ashtrays full of beer down the Glit, I’d be happy too.

      Whitey yawned widely. The message was clear. You don’t have the talent for it. Stick to what you know.

      A little while later they arrived at the office which was housed in the kind of building where small businesses went to die.

      Joe picked up his mail. It was junk except for Pius Thoughts, the journal of PIU, the Private Investigators’ Union. Ignoring the tiny lift which Whitey, who valued his skin above rubies, refused to enter, he laboured upstairs after the cat. In the office, he went through the ritual of checking his answerphone and his desk diary. No calls, no appointments. He wrote Galina Hacker 12.30 in the diary. It looked better, but he preferred the blank page.

      Next he filled his kettle in the tiny washroom, plugged it into the skirting board socket and nudged it on with his foot. While it boiled he improved the shining hour by cleaning out Whitey’s litter tray, a job too long postponed. The cat watched with the idle interest of a man in a bus queue watching a navvy dig a hole. Then, when Joe had finished, he stepped daintily on to the pristine litter and crapped copiously.

      ‘Why do you always do that?’ demanded Joe. ‘Time for that is before I clean things up.’

      Whitey gave him a look which wondered how an intelligent being, or even a human, could imagine he was going to use a soiled tray, jumped into the bottom desk drawer and went to sleep. Joe flung the windows open, cleaned the tray again, made a pot of tea, and settled down in his chair with Pius Thoughts. There was an article on ‘Combating Stake-Out Fatigue Syndrome’ which looked interesting. He got through two paragraphs and fell asleep.

      He was awoken by Aunt Mirabelle’s voice and looked around for her in disorientated panic till he realized he’d forgotten to turn off his answerphone.

      ‘I know you’re there, Joseph. I can feel it,’ she was declaiming. ‘So you come out from behind this ungodly machine and speak to me plain.’

      There was no point in pretending. He picked up the phone.

      ‘Morning, Auntie,’ he said.

      ‘Good morning to you, Joseph. How long is it since you seen Beryl?’

      ‘Saw her last night at the rehearsal, remember?’

      ‘Not likely to forget, the things you got up to, am I?’ retorted Mirabelle. ‘I mean, seen to talk to, take out? You’ve been neglecting that girl.’

      ‘Auntie, what’s to neglect? Beryl and me’s just friends, not a couple, courting or anything like that …’

      ‘Courting? You don’t know the meaning of the word! But that’s no reason not to be polite and pass the time of day instead of sneaking off to that sin-hole of yours to meet that trollop you’re making a fool of yourself with!’

      He’d been right. Even in the Glit, Mirabelle’s agents kept their eternal vigil.

      ‘Auntie, the Glit’s a pub, the girl’s a client …’

      ‘You her client,

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