Shooting in the Dark Read online

  Praise for John Baker

  ‘John Baker brings altogether more heart, invention and wit to the business of adapting the tough-guy novel to the realities of contemporary Britain’ Independent on Sunday

  ‘Engagingly credible, off the wall, romantic without being sentimental, a sharp sense of humour... a great cast of characters I look forward to meeting again’

  Val McDermid

  ‘Baker’s books just get better and better’ Tangled Web

  ‘Strong, dark and discursive... there’s no doubt that -with his York setting and up-from-the-gutter hero - Baker has added something new to the crime scene’

  Philip Oakes, Literary Review

  ‘Great characters, idiosyncratic plot - a definite original’ Maxim Jakubowski, Time Out

  ‘Absorbing and well-written with an exciting finale’

  T.J. Binyon, Evening Standard

  ‘The characters, the setting and particularly the writing, are completely successful’ Brimingham Post

  ‘Something quite unexpected... Entrancing and funny’ TLS

  ‘Neatly plotted and engagingly and wittily written: Sam’s next case is something to look forward to’ Daily Mail

  John Baker is the author of five Sam Turner novels. He has also recently published his first brilliant title in a brand-new series, The Chinese Girl. He lives in York. Visit his website at

  www.johnbakeronline.co.uk

  By John Baker

  The Sam Turner series

  Shooting in the Dark

  Walking with Ghosts

  King of the Streets

  Death Minus Zero

  Poet in the Gutter

  Other novels

  The Chinese Girl

  SHOOTING IN THE DARK

  ------------------------------------

  John Baker

  For Anne

  An Orion paperback

  First published in Great Britain in 2001

  by Orion

  This paperback edition published in 2002

  by Orion Books Ltd,

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,

  London WC2H 9EA

  Copyright © John Baker 2001

  The right of John Baker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The city and places in this novel owe as much to the imagination as to the physical reality. The characters and institutions are all fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 0 75284 798 8

  Typeset by Deltatype Ltd, Birkenhead, Merseyside

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  The earth is strung with lover’s pearls and all I see are dark eyes.

  Bob Dylan

  And he repelled, a short tale to make,

  Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,

  Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,

  Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,

  Into the madness wherein now he raves

  And all we mourn for.

  Hamlet

  Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

  Jonathan Swift

  For their valuable and helpful criticism, comments and insights I would like to thank Anne Baker; Michael Rose, Diane Roworth of the York Blind & Partially Sighted Society; Elaine Sommerville and Simon Stevens. Any inaccuracies or offended sensibilities are the responsibility of the writer alone.

  He died on 6 January so it is not surprising that my epiphany happened on the same date. As with any sudden spiritual manifestation, this epiphany happened without my conscious participation. I did not go in search of it, but while I was busy doing other things it discovered me.

  Science has been my passion and my life. I have been a troubadour for reason and rationality, and yet it is only now that I am beginning to understand the relationship between reason and intuition.

  For the record, this is what happened.

  I was in the library and I picked up a copy of Pascal’s Pensees. This is not my usual reading matter. I do not remember having looked at this book before and cannot even be sure that I was aware of its existence.

  I opened it at random and read the following:

  Memory and joy are intuitive; and even mathematical propositions become so. For reason creates natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by reason.

  Later the same day I came across the two women at the matinee performance of Titus Andronicus at the Theatre Royal. This wasn’t entirely coincidental. I had suspected they would be there. They make a habit of frequenting cultural events together and prefer the afternoons to the evening. But the play was shocking. Surely it is the bloodiest series of sketches to have dripped from Shakespeare’s quill? The horror was too much for several members of the audience who had to leave before the final curtain. According to the programme notes, Shakespeare wrote it under the influence of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, which was one of the first revenge tragedies of the English theatre.

  Afterwards, in the theatre bar, I watched the two women. I wasn’t close enough to hear what they said, but I assumed they were discussing the play. They didn’t stay long. And it was then, when they were leaving, that the younger one suddenly glanced over her shoulder, directly at me. And with a perfectly innocent-looking Campari and bitter lemon clutched in my hand I was visited by a je ne sais quoi. An insight of grace. A certainty.

  It came together in a lightning flash, the reason behind Pascal’s intuition, the blood and gore of Titus Andronicus, the woman’s knowing eyes. It was all enclosed in the moment. And in that moment all of our fortunes were raised up into the heavens like a flock of geese winging away from a frozen lake.

  1

  Sam Turner had a glass of water on his desk. He took a drink and tipped the glass sideways, playing with the level of the liquid. Cool, clear water. His mind tumbled back to the times he’d held a glass like that in the past. Times when the liquid had been deep amber; or the washed out violet of meths. Times when the glass could have contained anything other than water. Better if you couldn’t see through it. Better if it was thick and opaque so you knew it’d coat your brain with mud. Dam up all the images. Hide everything you found impossible to face.

  There was a tapping sound, faint; not in the outer office, but further off, somewhere else in the building, maybe on the stairs. Something rhythmical about it, like the introduction to a song. The image of a conductor’s baton came to mind, then a drumstick on a long dry bone.

  Sam took another sip from the glass, felt the liquid roll down his throat. Business had dried up during the summer. York had been flooded with tourists, as always, and a good percentage of them had been ripped off. A few had been mugged and robbed, mistakenly believing that Saturday night was for having fun. A Spanish girl had been raped and murdered in her hotel room in late July. But the perpetrator turned out to be a tourist himself. An Australian from Byron Bay. None of these misdemeanours came the way of Sam Turner. He read about them in the Evening Press. That summer in York there had been rain every day, but the current account of the Sam Turner Detective Agency had almost withered and died.

  The cash held out, though. Just. Sam hadn’t laid anybody off. There was a trickle of jobs through local solicitors and insurance companies, repo work, false claims, warrants to be served. Bread a
nd butter work. Plodding, mind-numbing fare. The kind of stuff you handed to Geordie or Marie and they jumped for joy, their lights shining like beacons, volunteered to work overtime without pay.

  Tap-tap, tap-tap. Closer now. Not quite as musical. A hollow sound to it, empty and desolate. He shrugged. Lots of music was like that. Some of the best kind.

  This last month the trickle of work had turned into a stream. They were working two missing-persons cases and an insurance scam involving the arson of a country estate. Last week they had wrapped up a political corruption scandal that everyone in town had known about for years. Everyone in town, that is, apart from the local boys in blue, who were either blind or involved in some of the pay-offs.

  And that wasn’t the end of it. Sam was sitting at his desk waiting for another couple of paying customers to appear. Ms Angeles Falco had made an appointment for herself and her sister, Isabel Reeves, at 9.15 this morning. The old firm was starting to earn again. Big time. Looked like they’d have to invest in a couple of barrows to get all the money over to the bank. Maybe buy some new socks as well, on his way home tonight.

  The political case had ended with Sam getting his right hand smashed in a police car door. A careless moment for Sam; and for the police inspector involved, one of those instances when revenge is sweetened by the public ambiguity of the act. On the emergency ward, later, Sam

  reported the injury as a physical assault, but the police did not pursue it. The deputy chief constable wrote him a short note which described the event, after an initial inquiry, as an unfortunate accident.

  Tap-tap. On the outer office door. Sam checked his watch - 9.27. He heard Celia walk to the outer door and open it. There was an exchange of words and then Celia’s footsteps bringing someone towards his office.

  Celia’s head appeared around the door. She had dyed her hair red again, which took years off her. She was trim and could use make-up and wear threads and jewellery like a professional. If you didn’t know she was older, you’d think she was on the rosy side of sixty. Never guess she’d spent forty years of her life as an English teacher.

  ‘Ms Angeles Falco,’ she said. She opened the door wide to allow the visitor access. The woman was twenty-seven going on thirty-five. From where Sam was sitting there was no sure way of dating her. With a tree or a horse you can be fairly specific. We know the age of the earth and the solar system, the stars and the universe. With most things we can say how long they’ve been around. But this one belonged to that breed of women who are adept at hiding all the clues. And when they’re good at it, they’re really good.

  Dark curls lightly gelled. Tanned skin with a hint of the Mediterranean, or perhaps it was South America. The suit was simple, modern, out-of-reach expensive. MaxMara or Escada. Sam had never been a fashion expert, but his nasal system reacted to the kind of dust activated by money.

  She was wearing designer shades with a price-tag that would feed a private detective for a month.

  It was only after you’d swallowed all that that you noticed the other thing, the thing that had caused the tapping. The long white stick with the silver handle. And suddenly a whole host of preconceptions winged their way around your consciousness, and you found yourself up and out of your seat and going to help the woman into a chair.

  Celia gave him a look and left the room, closing the door behind her. Sam shook his visitor’s hand and apologized for not using his right. He went back to his chair and looked across the desk at her, realizing that he hadn’t a clue why she was here. She’d made an appointment, but she hadn’t said what it was about. Sam waited for her to tell him, but she didn’t speak. Maybe she was mute as well?

  ‘I’m in the dark, here,’ he said, trying to grab the words as they came out, stuff them back in his mouth.

  Ms Angeles Falco smiled. She raised a hand to stifle any apology that Sam might be contemplating. She held her head at an angle and looked towards him, perhaps slightly to his left. When she spoke it was without a hint of an accent. ‘Yes,’ she said, a mischievous tone to her voice. ‘We’re two of a kind, Mr Turner.’

  Sam sat back in his chair and watched her, tried to make out if she could see or not. She moved her head once, twice, as if listening for something. But she was reading his mind. ‘I have some residual sight,’ she said. ‘If the light is good I can see outlines. At the moment, because there is a window behind you - is it a window or a light? - you appear to me like a dark smudge. Shoulders and head. I would guess your hair is cut short, but I’m not entirely sure.’

  Sam laughed. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I’m a dark smudge in the mornings. Start to brighten up and fill in the details after lunch. By early evening people start taking notice.’

  ‘You mean women.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Turner. I may be blind, but my other senses are intact. You can be kind, and sometimes violent. I’m sure one could say many things about you. But the portrait would not be complete if it didn’t take into account that you are an attractive man with a powerful sensual spirit.’ She smiled and folded her hands, placed them on the expensive material of her skirt. ‘You attract women. You may not make them happy. But you certainly attract them.’

  Sam picked up a pen and watched her some more. He wondered which of her four remaining senses had told her so much. There’d been a slight touch when he introduced himself; she couldn’t have got much from that. And she hadn’t tasted him, not even one tiny bite. Which left hearing and smell. He’d had a shower that morning, what, two hours ago. Surely he wasn’t pushing pheromones out into the atmosphere already. Maybe all of his personality was encapsulated in his voice?

  ‘It’s good to be flattered,’ he told her. ‘I could sit and listen all day. But that’s not why you’re here.’

  ‘No. I was supposed to meet my sister outside, but she hasn’t turned up. She didn’t ring you?’

  Sam consulted his pad, knowing it only contained a thumbnail sketch of a dog. ‘Mrs Reeves? No, Celia would have mentioned if she’d rung.’

  ‘I’ll try her mobile,’ Angeles Falco said, fishing in her bag. Her body tensed. ‘That’s strange. My phone isn’t here. I must have left it at work.’

  ‘You can use this phone,’ Sam said. ‘Or we could start without her?’

  ‘Yes, of course. It’s just not like Isabel to be late.’

  ‘We can re-schedule the appointment for another time,’ Sam said. ‘I’m happy to play this any way you want.’ Angeles Falco bit her bottom lip. ‘It was Isabel’s idea to come here, Mr Turner. Someone’s been watching her, following her, for the last couple of months. We didn’t think much about it at first, but now the same thing is happening to me.’

  It was understandable. She was a beautiful woman. Sam could imagine himself following her around for a couple of months. Maybe even longer. ‘Start at the beginning, Ms Falco. I need to know everything, all the facts, and your suspicions as well.’

  ‘You know we’re sisters. Myself and Isabel. She is two years younger than me. Daddy was Argentinian and Mummy English, but we lived here, close to York, up in the Howardian hills. My father was successful in the soft-drinks industry.’ She hesitated momentarily, a dramatic pause, indicating a moment of import in her story.

  ‘Mummy and Daddy were killed in a road accident five years ago. A pile-up on the M6. Isabel and I inherited the estate. We are major shareholders in the business. We are comfortable. No money problems. Then, a couple of months ago, Isabel noticed she was being watched. It cast a shadow over her life. She’s happy, having a love affair, getting divorced from a man who has made her unhappy for years, and she’s making plans to move in with her new lover.’

  Sam cleared his throat. ‘Does she know who is watching her?’

  ‘No. That’s what we want you to find out.’

  ‘Description? Male or female?’

  Angeles Falco shook her head. ‘We don’t know. Isabel hasn’t actually seen anyone. It’s more like a feeling.’

  Sam put his p
encil down. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And the one that’s following you, is that more like a feeling as well?’ She shifted in her chair, unsettled now. Her head moved from side to side, as if she’d caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. ‘It must be the same person,’ she said. ‘They didn’t believe us at the police station. Oh, they said they’d follow it up, make sure the man on the beat checked our doors at night. That kind of thing. But I could tell they thought we were neurotic.

  ‘Even my doctor thinks I’m paranoid. I wouldn’t mind, only I’ve known him all my life. I’ve never been ill, not like that. Childhood illnesses, the occasional bout of flu, but nothing mental. I’m not paranoid. Someone is watching me. If Isabel says someone is watching her, then someone is watching her. She wouldn’t make it up. We’re not like that, Mr Turner. I know someone has been watching me for the last month and I’m not imagining it.’

  Her voice got a little shrill there, towards the end of her speech. The eyes, if he could have seen them, maybe beginning to bulge? You set up in business as a private eye; you’re really setting yourself up for anything that comes along. She wouldn’t be the first crazy to come in off the street. Sam had sometimes played with the idea of changing the sign outside the office, so it announced him as a psychoanalyst instead of a private detective. Same kind of work in many ways. You follow up a line of clues, hope you find a crock of gold at the end. You know 50 per cent of the time it’ll be the other kind of crock, but the guy who hired you is the one paying the bills.

  There were good policemen and bad policemen, everyone knew that. Sam Turner wasn’t a bigot. Hell, Sam Turner knew there were good policemen and bad policemen even though he had never, in his entire life, met one of the good ones. Same goes for doctors. It was in their interest to make you feel secure, like they knew more about your body than you knew yourself. They couldn’t afford to let it get out that there was a whole lot more they didn’t know about disease, that when it came to matters of life and death, they were just as mortal and fallible as the rest of us.