THE PHANTOM MURDER an addictive crime mystery full of twists by LEWIS ROY

Author:LEWIS, ROY
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JOFFE BOOKS crime thrillers and mysteries
Published: 2020-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The network was very much like a spider’s web. It was as though Jackie Parton touched part of the outer edge of the web and it shivered, sending slight, covert messages along all the individual strands, reaching dark places, alleyways of information, whispered recesses where people made suppositions, raised possible links, suggested names and activities, arranged for hidden spiders to come scuttling out of dusty corners for favours, or money, or friendship.

There were bouncers from the nightclubs, who saw a great deal and heard more; a few underpaid cashiers in bookmakers’ offices; there were croupiers in gambling houses who were dangerously on the fiddle, and there were rivermen and long-haul lorry drivers, corner shop owners and cabbies, and racing men who frequented a pub in Byker called the Horse and Jockey. It was a different, harder clientele at the Hydraulic Engine on the hill above the river at Scotswood, and a different atmosphere at the Irish Free Hall in Benwell where Jackie was always greeted with free drinks from the inveterate gamblers who inhabited its dusty, dilapidated, Guinness-odoured corners. Down near the docks at Shields, he could have private conversations on the darkly glistening cobbled streets, pick up rumours and gossip off the freighters, and glean well-ripened snippets from old men who had seen it all before and could put things into an older context — but the sum total, as Jackie was well aware, could be a tumbled confusion of information. He was never direct in his questioning, usually casual, listening more than speaking, only putting in an occasional prompt. He found it odd sometimes, the way men who were living on the edge, where violence lurked in the shadows, where loose talk could be dangerous, or where a wrong word could end with a knife between someone’s ribs, odd that people were prepared to talk. For some it was because they were loose-mouthed; for others, it was because it brought a feeling of involvement, importance into their lives. With some it was money exchanging hands, or a few drinks poured down receptive throats.

But none of them were ambitious men or women. The prostitutes who talked to him did so because they liked him. The sporting men still held admiration for his recklessness in the old, racing days. The majority talked because they liked talking, it made them feel important, part of the rich riverside scene, aware of community, untouched by the grand new roads and the splendid tall buildings that had changed much of the face of the old Tyneside. And they all were prepared to talk, or gossip, or offer surmises because they knew their names were safe with him, whatever use he might make of the information they supplied.

But it was the barmen who were able to help most. They spent their lives in a frantic, rushed serving of the mass of men and women who poured into the pubs in the evenings, or a casual, relieved leaning against the bar polishing a glass in the slack times.

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