The Crooked Beat Read Online Free

help. If Gillespie was involved, he had to make a move. And he’d confirmed to me he wasn’t working today. It was worth taking a chance. I picked up Sarah from her house and we drove across the city. I parked up away from Gillespie’s house so he wouldn’t see us, but close enough for us to see any movement. It was a fishing expedition, but I needed to do something.
    Sarah took me through what she’d found out about him. ‘He’s got a record.’
    ‘How did he end up working in security?’
    She shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago and he’s not been in trouble since. We’re talking decades ago.’
    ‘Right.’ Maybe his conviction was spent. I knew a lot of young men grew out of crime, that it was nothing more than youthful stupidity. But it didn’t feel right. It said something about the man’s character.
    We stared at his house until Sarah took an envelope out her bag. ‘I’ll give him a knock.’
    It was a trick we’d worked in the past. If one of us was unknown to our target, we’d knock on the door claiming to have a letter or delivery. If our target answered the door, we’d deliberately give a false name. If they didn’t answer the door, we had a ready-made and plausible reason to be knocking on their neighbour’s door. And that was often when we got some useful information. I watched as Sarah talked to Gillespie’s neighbour before returning to the car.
    ‘We’ll find him at the shops,’ she said.
    ‘Right.’ I knew the layout of the area. The square of shops also contained a bookies and a pub. It was a short drive away. We discussed a plan as we drove. The best we could do was that Sarah would walk about until she spotted him. I parked up in the centre of the shops. It didn’t take her long to find him. He was watching the horse racing. Sarah went into the newsagent and got us chocolate, drinks and a newspaper.
    We only had to wait thirty minutes. Gillespie came outside and lit a cigarette. Five minutes later a taxi collected him. Sarah told me to follow. It was becoming a habit. I hung back as best I could without losing sight of him. The taxi dropped Gillespie off at a pub on Hedon Road. It was set slightly back from the dual carriageway. From the outside it was run-down and in poor condition. I looked up at the shabby paintwork around the window frames and the weathered bricks. The net curtains were grey. No wonder the place was largely ignored by potential customers.
    ‘You can’t go in,’ Sarah said.
    I nodded. We both knew it belonged to George Sutherland. He was a name from my past.
    I’d previously worked for his wife. She’d tired of his affairs over the years. It had been a simple job. I’d followed him discreetly for a couple of weeks. It had been one of my easiest jobs. He’d used a cheap chain hotel on the edge of the city centre, the woman an employee of his. It did mean I wasn’t going to be welcome. On paper, Sutherland was a legitimate businessman, but the man had given off an unpleasant vibe. I recognised his black heart. I’d quickly learned he’d worked for Frank Salford in the past. Salford had been one of an exclusive group of criminals who’d exercised a grip on organised crime in the city. He’d died a couple of years ago. Cancer, rather than violence. Our paths had crossed and I wasn’t upset to learn he’d suffered before dying. I hadn’t dug any deeper into Sutherland than that. I’d simply passed over the photographic evidence to his wife and left it at that.
    ‘Gillespie didn’t see me at the shops,’ Sarah said. ‘He had his back to me.’
    Before I had chance to reply, she was out of the car and walking towards the entrance. I had to wait it out. There was little to look at. The pub stood in isolation. Most of the industry which had once surrounded it was long gone. The Fenner and Humbrol factories had once employed hundreds. A new office complex was in the process of being built on the Humbrol site and a haulage firm had opened next to it.