Stuart Pawson - Chill Factor

“I just…I just…”

Now I was giggling. “You just what?”

“I just realised…I just realised why they call it…Why they call it…”

I completed the sentence for her. “Why they call it Dick Lane? It was named after the Methodist minister who built this church.” I flapped a hand at the building to my left.

A respectable stream was running down the middle of the alley, and up at the top the cobbles shone yellow and orange with the lights from the square. Halfway along a movement caught my attention, so brief that I wondered if I’d imagined it. A figure stepped out of the shadows and stepped straight back into them.

“If you say so,” she replied, finding a tissue and blowing her nose. “But I don’t believe it.”

“I’m appalled,” I told her. “I can’t imagine what sort of people you mix with. C’mon, I’m soaked.” I grabbed her hand again and pulled her towards the towpath.

The canal was a black hole, devoid of movement or form apart from where an occasional rectangle of light fell on to it and the surface became a pattern of overlapping circles, piling on to each other as the rain increased in force. I stepped into a puddle and said: “I think this was a mistake.”

Annette stopped, saying: “That’s where Darryl Buxton lived, isn’t it?” She was looking at a mill across the canal, converted into executive flats. Buxton was a rapist that we jailed.

“That’s right,” I agreed, looking behind us. I hadn’t imagined it. A figure stepped cautiously out of the end of Dick Lane and merged into the shadows again. He was hugging the wall, gaining on us, and the next opening was nearly a hundred yards away. “Do you have plenty of milk?” I asked, tugging at her arm.

“Milk?”

“Mmm. You know, comes from cows. I like my cocoa made with milk.”

“Oh, I think we’ll be able to manage that. Except mine comes from Tesco.”

“That’ll do. C’mon.”

“The canal looks spooky, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Not as romantic as I’d thought. Perhaps I was confusing it with Venice.”

“How deep is it?”

I looked back but couldn’t be sure if he was there. “I don’t know.”

“Did you swim in it when you were a child?”

“No.”

“You didn’t?”

“No. We went to the baths.” This time I saw him, and he was much closer, moving purposefully but still keeping to the shadows. I stopped to pick up a stone and tossed it towards the water. It splashed somewhere out in the blackness. When I looked, he’d stopped too.

We were nearly at the end of the next alleyway, similar to Dick Lane but without the dicks. It was another service road, cobbled and narrow, and not illuminated. I patted my pockets, feeling for my mobile phone, knowing I wouldn’t find it. “Do you have your phone with you?” I asked, but she didn’t.

“Listen, Annette,” I said as we approached the end of the wall. “When we reach this corner I want you to do exactly as I say.”

She sensed the urgency in my voice. “What is it, Charlie?” she asked.

“Just do as I say. When we get round the corner I want you to run as fast as you can towards the town centre. There’s a pub called the Talisman at the top of the street. Go in and go straight to the ladies’. Lock yourself in for five minutes. Then come out and order two drinks at the bar. I’ll join you about then.”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Just do as I say.”

“Why? What is it?”

“We’re being followed.” We reached the corner and turned it. Two big green dumpsters were standing there, just as I’d hoped. “Now run!” I hissed, pushing her towards the lights.

“And what are you doing?” she asked.

“Just run!”

“I’m not running without you.”

I heard the tch tch of his trainers on the wet floor, fast at first, as if he were jogging, then slower, cautious, as he reached the corner. I grabbed Annette’s arm and pushed her behind the dumpster, bundling her deep into the corner. A rat squealed a protest and scuttled away.

The footsteps paused as he surveyed the empty street, then started again, striding out. I heard his noise, sensed his shadow as I anticipated his position, predicting the exact moment he would emerge. As he passed the dumpster I took two rapid strides forward and hurled myself at him.

Priority was to stop him finding his gun. I threw my arms around him in a bear hug and knocked him to the ground. He kicked wildly and we rolled over, first me on top, then him, followed by me again. As he rolled over me I felt water running down my neck. He shouted something I didn’t catch and Annette joined in, flailing at him with her fists, trying to hold his head. Next time he was on the bottom I risked letting go with one hand for sufficient time to smash his face against the cobbles. He jerked and went limp.

Neither of us had handcuffs with us. I felt his clothing for a gun but he was unarmed. I rolled him over and moved to one side so my shadow wasn’t on him. His lips were moving and a trickle of blood ran from his forehead until the rain diluted it to almost nothing.

“Oh shit!” I said.

“It’s me,” he mumbled. “It’s me, Mr Priest.”

“Do you know him?” Annette asked.

“Yeah, I know him.” I grabbed his lapels and pulled him, still mumbling, into a seated position. “I know him all right. I’d like you to meet Jason Lee Gelder: until recently chief suspect in the Marie-Claire Hollingbrook case.”

It was Les Isles’ fault. We led Jason to where there was more light and cleaned him up. He was more apologetic than I was, and refused to be taken to Heckley General for a check-up. He wouldn’t even let us give him a lift home. “It’s my fault, Mr Priest,” he kept insisting. “I shouldn’t have followed you like that.”

When they’d decided not to oppose bail, poor old Jason had interpreted this as implying that he was no longer in the frame for Marie-Claire’s murder. He’d attempted to thank Les, who’d said: “Don’t thank me, thank Inspector Priest,” and told him that he owed me a pint. Jason took him literally. When he saw us at the fireworks he thought he would pay his debts, and followed us into Dick Lane. He said he was going to catch up with us there, but when we stopped “for a snog” he thought better of it and waited.

I believed him. Jason wasn’t a crook, but he certainly qualified as a client, and some of them get funny ideas. They come into the station and see us in court, and start to see themselves as part of the organisation. We see them as the enemy, they regard themselves as our colleagues. I told Jason to call into the nick tomorrow and report the incident. He said it didn’t matter, but I insisted. I’d do a full report, to keep myself and Annette in the clear. He was slow but well-meaning, and destined for a lifetime of holding the dirty end of whatever stick was offered him. I imagined him at the slaughterhouse, doing every obscene job that his sick workmates could find, and felt sorry for the Jasons of the world.

It was only a five-minute drive to Annette’s, and we did it in silence. I doused the lights outside her flat and turned to face her. She stared straight ahead, unsmiling and pale in the harsh light. Under the street lamps the rain was falling like grain out of a silo.

“You’re soaked,” I ventured, and she nodded in agreement.

“The, er, evening didn’t quite turn out as I intended,” I said.

“No,” she replied.

“But the music was good. I enjoyed that.” Annette didn’t respond, so I went on: “We used to go to the Irish Club, years ago. Had some great nights there. It was the headaches next morning that put a stop to it.”

She turned to face me, and said: “You thought it was him, didn’t you?”