Death of a Cave Dweller Read Online Free Page A

got a screw loose,” the drummer told him.
    â€œI don’t think I have,” Pete countered. “It seems to me that somebody’s got it in for the Seagulls – an’ I don’t want to be the next one to end up dead.”
    Rutter lay back contentedly, his wife’s head buried in his chest. There were a few difficulties in their situation, he thought. More than a few. But not for a second did he regret marrying his beautiful, blind wife.
    The nagging ring of the telephone in the hall cut into his thoughts. “Damn!” he said.
    â€œYou don’t have to answer it,” Maria murmured sleepily.
    â€œIf I don’t, he’ll only ring back in five minutes.”
    â€œYou can’t be sure it’s Mr Woodend.”
    â€œOh yes I can. I don’t know how he does it, but nobody can make the telephone bell ring like Cloggin’-it Charlie.”
    Maria sighed, and shifted her position so that Rutter could swing his body off the bed. Perhaps he was right. The telephone did seem to have a more insistent ring whenever the caller was Charlie Woodend.
    Rutter made his way quickly down the stairs. They’d get a phone extension put in the bedroom, he decided. That way, when Maria was upstairs when it rang, she’d have time to answer the phone herself – before the caller hung up in exasperation.
    He lifted the receiver. “Hello, sir.”
    The man on the other end of the line chuckled. “We’ll make a detective of you yet,” he said.
    The voice sounded like the man himself, Rutter thought. Big and square and dependable. He remembered the first time he had met Woodend, on Euston railway station, and how shocked he’d been that a chief inspector should be dressed in a hairy sports coat, cavalry twill trousers and scuffed suede shoes. With the arrogance of youth, he’d assumed that Woodend’s wife was to blame for his scruffy appearance. Now he knew better. Joan Woodend had tried for years to smarten her husband up, but though she could usually bend most people to her will, she’d had no success with her Charlie.
    â€œGot any plans for your unexpected day off?” the chief inspector asked.
    â€œNot really.”
    â€œVery wise,” Woodend said. “A bobby should never count on havin’ any free time.”
    â€œWhere are we being sent?”
    â€œNowhere yet. But from what I’ve just read in the papers, I shouldn’t be surprised if we get a call to say we’re wanted in Liverpool.”
    Rutter nodded at himself in the mirror. If there were a case in Liverpool, it would almost definitely be theirs. “So what’s the job?” he asked. “Does it sound interesting?”
    Woodend chuckled again. “Oh, it sounds interestin’ enough,” he said. “An’ it should be right up your street, an’ all.”
    â€œRight up my street?” Rutter repeated, mystified.
    â€œAye, it’s what you might call a
rock’n’roll murder. Maybe the first one there’s
ever been.”

Three
    T he ferry chugged stoically across the grey-blue water towards Liverpool’s Pier Head. It was a mild morning in early April. The sun shone down benevolently on the docks – those same docks which had made Liverpool rich during the height of the slave trade, and had been the target for so much of the German Luftwaffe’s fury during the war. Overhead, sea birds glided on the air currents and cawed incessantly. Underfoot, the boat’s engine sent vibrations throbbing through the deck floorboards. An hour earlier, the ferry had been packed with commuters, but now the two men on the upper deck pretty much had it to themselves.
    â€œWe didn’t need to take the train to Birkenhead, you know, sir,” Bob Rutter said. “I checked up in the timetable. There was a direct connection from Euston to Liverpool Lime Street.”
    â€œSo I believe,” Woodend replied.