Текст книги "Death in Dark Waters"

Автор книги: Patricia Hall

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter Eleven

“You don’t want me to handle the case then?” DCI Michael Thackeray’s question dropped into the silence in Superintendent Jack Longley’s office like a stone into deep water. When there was no immediate reply Thackeray shrugged and moved over to the window from where he could see the rain beating down onto the umbrellas of hurrying passers-by in the puddled square below. His anxiety felt like a physical weight on his shoulders. Longley shifted his bulk uneasily in the chair which never seemed quite commodious enough for him and grunted.

“What I want,” he said at length, and then paused again as if embarrassed. “What I always want is a bloody text-book murder investigation. And you just seem to have thrown the text-book away.”

“A quiet chat was all it was,” Thackeray said. “He was never a registered informant.”

“But should have been,” Longley said.

“You could argue.” The hollow feeling which had invaded Thackeray’s stomach some hours ago when he had been called to a suspicious death seemed to be affecting his breathing.

“I do bloody argue,” Longley snapped back. “He should have been registered if he was worth anything. But you’d no call to be chatting up Foreman’s staff behind his back without cause in the first place. And if you seriously thought Stanley Wilson had useful information you should have played it straight, taken someone with you, done it by the book. Now he’s dead it’ll all have to come out. You’re out on a limb, Michael, and for what? He gave you nothing and was never likely to give you anything. And now he’s dead and turns out to be a worse little scrote than we ever suspected.”

“So bring someone else in if you think I’m compromised,” Thackeray said, unable to keep his own anger, which was directed mainly at himself, under control any longer. “Appoint someone else senior investigating officer if you think it’ll help. Get the computer crime people in. It looks as if we’ll need them anyway. Sir.” The last word was added as an afterthought and Longley flushed slightly in response. But for the moment he contented himself with drumming his fingers on the file in front of him and breathing heavily.

Thackeray’s mind flashed back an hour to his first sight of the ligature around Stanley Wilson’s neck, which had been pulled so tight that it had broken the skin and become caked in blood. Amos Atherton, sweating in his plastic coveralls, had glanced up at the DCI from his position crouched beside the dead man’s body as Thackeray struggled to conceal the awful realisation that this was a noose he might have provided himself.

“Didn’t mean to make any mistake about it, did he?” Atherton had asked, oblivious to the DCI’s inner turmoil. “You don’t get many men strangled. Gay, was he?”

Thackeray, shrouded in the same oversized white coveralls as the pathologist, had nodded slightly.

“Liked young boys,” he said, his mouth dry. “Or youngish, anyway. We’d not managed to do him for it.”

“Happen one got his own back then,” Atherton said unsympathetically, glancing at the dead man’s trousers and underpants which were rumpled round his ankles. “He’s been dead a while, that I can tell you. Probably killed some time yesterday, at a guess. He’s as stiff as a board. You’ll be looking for a boyfriend, I’d say. Popped in yesterday for a bit of nookie and it all got out of hand. Into S & M was he? There’s some odd marks on his arms.”

“I’ve no bloody idea,” Thackeray had said, although he was as certain as he could be that Wilson’s violent end had more to do with his own intervention in his affairs than the dead man’s sexual preferences. His mind sheered away from the thought that perhaps Wilson had been tortured before being killed, and that the information someone had been trying to extract had something to do with him.

“How was he found?” Atherton asked.

“Postman tried to deliver a packet and when he got no reply he looked through the window,” Thackeray said shortly.

“Must have got a nasty shock seeing his bare bum in the air like that.”

Atherton turned back to his examination of the body with a grim smile and Thackeray turned away. He had already glanced round the modestly furnished living room of the terraced house where Wilson had evidently eked out a pretty impecunious existence and wondered what Barry Foreman had paid him for his services. Not a lot, if the threadbare carpet and worn brown armchairs were anything to go by. Or perhaps Wilson had other uses for his money than interior decor.

He left Atherton to his examination and went upstairs where a different explanation for the impoverished appearance of Wilson’s house soon presented itself. In one bedroom an unmade bed and a few sticks of furniture indicated where Wilson had spent his final night. But in the back bedroom, where thick curtains kept out the daylight and the floor was deeply carpeted, it became clear what Wilson had been spending his money on as soon as Thackeray switched on the light. The DCI found himself facing a bank of high-tech equipment only some of which he recognised. A computer, video recorders and a wall stacked high with tapes and CDs crowded the single padded black leather chair from which Wilson had evidently indulged a hobby which Thackeray guessed, knowing Wilson’s tastes, would have seen him arrested without much ceremony had the law ever invaded his privacy here. And whatever he had earned, it was clear that a large proportion of it must have been spent on travel: the unlikely sight of Wilson clad in various unlikely combinations of swimming gear and sarongs smiled out from a wall of snapshots taken in exotic locations, young boys at his side. Even before examining a single tape Thackeray felt a shudder of revulsion go through him. This room alone, he thought, would launch an investigation which could last for years. He was thankful that the force had a special unit to deal with pornography and computer crime.

Without moving any further into the room he had looked around carefully, but the written records he sought were not in evidence. Everything, he thought, must be locked away in the computers, and to crack their passwords and codes he would need expert assistance. Quietly he left the room and closed the door behind him with a plastic gloved hand. It was possible, he thought, that Wilson’s extra-curricular activities had brought down the vicious retribution which Atherton was examining in the livingroom below. But the sort of images Wilson had been downloading from the Internet, and quite possibly copying and circulating amongst his friends, were more likely to involve young children on the other side of the world than anywhere near at hand. So why had someone killed him?

Superintendent Longley must have been talking again for some time before the sound of his voice jolted Thackeray back to the present and his unenviable situation on the boss’s carpet. He turned away from the window with a start.

“Are you bloody listening to me?” Longley asked irritably as his colour rose from pink to puce.

“Sir?”

“I was telling you why I’ll let you handle this case, if you could do me the courtesy of paying attention,” Longley snapped.

“Sorry,” Thackeray said. “I was just wondering how many thousands of images that bastard has been distributing.”

“Aye well, that’s one of the things you’ll have to find out, isn’t it? And who he’s been distributing them to. You can bet your life that the answer to his death’s somewhere in that disgusting trade, if that’s what he was into. We’ll get some help on the computer side of things. But you can go ahead and look at his bank accounts and any other financial information you can find. And find out where he went on his jaunts abroad. He must have been coining it if the scale of the thing’s as big as you say it is.”

“I’ll need to talk to Barry Foreman. He was his boss.”

“Of course you will,” Longley said. “And you’ll do it by the book. Background on the dead man’s what you’re after, not fantasies about Foreman’s affairs. Not unless and until they’re relevant. Understood?”

“Right,” Thackeray agreed without enthusiasm. “It’s at least possible that someone told Foreman I’d been talking to Wilson,” he said. “He wouldn’t be best pleased.”

“After your last chat with him he’s already wondering if you’re going off your rocker,” Longley said. “‘out’ he thought you were, when I met him at the regeneration meeting. Finding out you’ve been wasting your time investigating him through Wilson’ll confirm his worst suspicions.”

“Nice to know I’ve got your support,” Thackeray said. Longley looked at him for a moment, taking in the furrows of anxiety which seemed to have deepened around angry blue eyes since the previous day, and reckoned that Barry Foreman might have a point. He was more than usually aware that Thackeray had almost blown his career once and he wondered whether he was about to make the attempt again.

“You’ve got my support, Michael,” he said more calmly than he felt. “Get the incident room set up. By the sound of it Stanley Wilson’s not much loss to the world, but we need to know who put him down. They may not be so discriminating next time. Keep me on top of the investigation, will you? Oh, and by the way, what’s the state of play on the Adams boy? Have we come up with anything to shut his father up?”

“It’s run into the sand,” Thackeray said shortly. “Just as I always thought it would. The kids won’t say anything. But I think I’ve shut Grantley Adams up anyway, if that’s all you’re worried about. He’s found out the hard way what we’ve known for years – that the law’s an ass where soft drugs are concerned – and he’d much rather his precious Jeremy remained an innocent victim than got himself a criminal record for possession – or worse. I don’t think we’ll hear much more from Mr. Adams.”

“He’s raising his voice loud enough in the Gazette,” Longley said doubtfully.

“Well, he’s got what he wanted as far as the Carib Club’s concerned. The place is closed. He’ll have to be satisfied with that.”

Laura Ackroyd drove back to the Project on the Heights that lunch-time out of a sense of obligation rather than with any enthusiasm. She had spent much of the morning trying to persuade Ted Grant to find some space in the paper for a feature on the drug problems of Wuthering but without much success. His attention, never long-lasting, had switched overnight to the threat that the flood defences – protecting low-lying parts of the town – were about to be overwhelmed by the rain which had been relentless for most of the winter. Reporters had been dispatched to talk to threatened householders, photographers sent out to snap the teetering walls of sandbags which were all that now protected some streets from inundation, page layouts had been sketched out and possible headlines tossed around the editorial meeting: Laura’s argument that there was an equally serious crisis on the Heights met blank looks of incomprehension. In exasperation she had called the magazine editor in London for whom she had written before, but gained only an equivocal promise to think about the idea and let her know.

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” she muttered as she heard the phone go down at the other end. “Thanks a bunch.”

“First sign of madness, talking to yourself,” Bob Baker had hissed in her ear as he passed behind her desk. “And by the way, I can’t get anyone at police HQ to take your murdered druggie seriously. I should stick to knitting patterns if I were you, love. Leave crime to those who understand it.”

Laura had swung round on her chair but Baker was already out of reach. Turning back to her computer screen angrily she wondered what would have happened if she had hit him. The sack did not seem too unpleasant a prospect today.

She parked as close as she could to the Project and wondered who owned the dark blue BMW which stood by the kerb on the other side of the road. She did not think much of its chances of survival, although the cluster of youths who habitually loitered around the flats appeared to be keeping well back in the shadows under the walkways on this occasion. She was aware of their hostile eyes following her progress across the muddy pathway to the doors of the Project.

Once inside she was surprised to find herself confronting a tall black man in designer jeans, expensive leather jacket and tigerish aspect.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Sorry?” Laura said.

“Who are you?” the self-appointed gate-keeper demanded, barring Laura’s way with a faint smile and unfriendly eyes.

“I’m looking for my grandmother. She works here,” Laura said, attempting without success to sidle past her interrogator.

“Grandma?” The expression was incredulous now.

“Joyce,” Laura insisted. “Can I come in please?”

“Oh, that grandma,” the man said. “So you must be Laura?”

“If it’s any business of yours,” Laura said, feeling her temper, already reduced to the shortest of fuses by her morning in the office, flare again.

“You’d better go through then.”

“Who are you anyway?” Laura insisted. “What business is it of yours?”

“You remember that old TV programme called Minder? That’s what I am – a minder. Name’s Pound. I’m with Barry Foreman who’s paying your grandma and her friends a visit, as it goes. Dodgy area, this. You should know that, girl.”

“Oh, sod off,” Laura said, pushing her way past her tormentor. “I’ve had enough of bloody men for one day.”

“So it’s true what they say about redheads, then?”

Laura ignored the final jibe from behind her and, following the sound of voices, made her way across the refurbished, if still slightly scarred, reception area and into the main classroom where she found Joyce sitting at the teacher’s desk with Kevin Mower at her shoulder. A smartly suited Barry Foreman sprawled across a table in front of them, listening to Joyce in full flow with a condescending smile on his face. He glanced at Laura without great surprise when she came in, before turning back to Joyce.

“It’s much more important to get the local folk behind you themselves if you want to make any long-term difference to these families,” Joyce was saying. “It’s not the same if you just drop facilities in their lap. It has to be something they need and want. They have to be involved.”

“We’ll still be waiting for this lot to get involved come the next bloody millennium,” Foreman said dismissively when she had finished. “Any road, there won’t be so many of your precious deprived families up here when we’ve finished rebuilding the place. What the new community’ll need is a purpose built college with all the trimmings.”

“Which’ll throw the most difficult kids out just like all the others have done,” Kevin Mower said quietly.

“And you’ve turned these kids lives around, have you?” Foreman asked. “Sent ’em all off to the university and all that? Not what I hear.”

“We’ve got half a dozen of them into rehab,” Mower said. “That’s worth the effort. And some of them are learning something for the first time in their lives. It’s a slow process …”

“Too bloody slow,” Foreman said. “You’ve not got the resources to make any serious difference. Nor the staff. What’s a copper like you wasting his time up here for, any road? You’re not a bloody teacher. You should be out chasing villains.”

Laura saw Mower’s expression harden and she wondered whether he had told Donna yet about his day job.

“We’ll not agree, Mr. Foreman,” Joyce said. “I dare say Councillor Spencer and his new cabinet will have to decide which way to go. But we’ll make a strong case for a voluntary centre when we see him. You can be sure of that. Money’s all very well, but it’s not everything. People are important too.”

“Aye, well, we’ll see about that,” Foreman said.

He slid off the desk and made his way to the classroom door.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he said as he went out and was joined by the tall figure of his bodyguard who had been lounging against the wall outside.

“That man is a bastard,” Laura said, giving first Joyce and then Mower a fierce hug of consolation. “If he thinks he’s running the town, what chance do ordinary people have?”

“The DCI doesn’t trust him further than he can throw him,” Mower said. “Yet he seems to have got onto some sort of inside track with the council. I don’t understand it.”

“Have you told Donna that you’re in the Force?” Laura asked. “Because I don’t give much for your chances there if you haven’t. It’ll be all round the estate shortly.”

“I told her last night when I got back,” Mower said. “She wasn’t best pleased. She couldn’t come in today because she’s gone to fetch Emma home from the Infirmary, but it’s maybe just as well. I don’t think Donna and I are much of a team any more.”

“I’m sorry,” Laura said.

“You don’t have to be. There was no future in it and I think we both knew that.”

“Nothing seems to be going right up here,” Laura said. “I came up to tell you that I can’t persuade Ted Grant to do much about the problems on the estate. Floods are his top priority this week. Apparently the Beck’s going to burst its banks, the Maze will back up and half the lower part of the town’s going to be under water by the end of the week.”

“The Beck?” Mower asked, looking blank.

“Ah, you can tell you’re an off-cum-d’un,” Joyce said, smiling.

“A what …?”

“A stranger, not a local, a bloody southerner,” Laura explained with a grin. “What you probably don’t realise is that there’s a river runs right under the centre of Bradfield. Or a big stream, anyway. Comes down from the hills and joins the Maze at Eckersley. But some bright Victorian decided it got in the way of his regeneration scheme in about 1860 and shoved the whole thing into an underground culvert. Pushed up land values a treat, I dare say. Nothing changes, does it? Anyway according to the environment people, the culvert isn’t going to take the strain when all the rain we’ve been having runs off the Pennines and no one knows quite what’ll happen then. There’ll be a lot of water sloshing about, anyway, and Ted Grant is issuing the troops with their Wellie boots, just in case.”

“It flooded once back in the forties,” Joyce said. “But they deepened the culvert and it was supposed to take anything after that.”

“But not global warming,” Laura said. “No one anticipated that.”

“Aye, well, there’s a lot to be said for living on a hill, even if it is Wuthering,” Joyce said. “One thing we won’t need up here is Noah’s Ark.”

No, Laura thought angrily, but you might need the cavalry before long.

Michael Thackeray and DC Val Ridley – acting sergeant in Kevin Mower’s absence – sat in Barry Foreman’s comfortable office later that afternoon listening to the security boss’s dismissive description of an employee so incompetent that it seemed to Val Ridley a wonder that he had been employed at all. Foreman fingered through the buff file on his desk.

“I’d have sacked him but his dad did me a favour years ago, lent me some money when I was setting up. I’m not generally a sentimental sort of bloke but I felt I owed Stanley. But I always thought there was summat a bit odd about him. Gay, of course. You’ll know that, I expect?”

Thackeray nodded non-commitally.

“Good enough at his job, though, was he?” he asked.

“Good enough. It was only a bit of low level accounting he did. Clerking really. Seemed to be enough for him. He never complained. Of course he’d no family to support. He wouldn’ t have, would he, being that way inclined?”

“Was he liked in the office?”

“Give over,” Foreman said. “They’re not right politically correct, the sort of lads I employ. They put up with Stanley. Made his life a misery now and then with their shirt-lifter cracks. What d’you expect?”

“Protection?” Val Ridley said. “From his boss?” Foreman looked at her for a moment with contempt.

“He were lucky to have the job. He knew that, I knew that and everyone else in the bloody company knew that. He didn’t ask for any favours and he didn’t get any. Tell me the police are any different and I’ll die laughing.”

“And his pay? How much was that?” Thackeray asked.

“I’ll get a computer print-out for you,” Foreman said. “He did some overtime sometimes. Mind I did sometimes think he must be making a bit on the side somehow. Took some exotic holidays now and again, did Stanley. Thailand a couple of times. Goa. Odd, that.”

“We’ll need to talk to everyone he worked with,” Thackeray said.

“And how long’s that going to be carrying on?”

“Just as long as it takes,” Thackeray snapped back. “He doesn’t sound the most popular man on your payroll and he may have made enemies you don’t know about.” Or friends, he thought, wondering whether any of Foreman’s other staff shared Wilson’s interest in pornography.

“Right,” Foreman said with evident lack of enthusiasm. “But they work shifts, you know. You’ll have to catch them when you can.”

“So do we, Mr. Foreman,” Val Ridley said. “If you give me a list of when your lads come in and clock off I’m sure we can match it.”

Thackeray got to his feet slowly as Foreman relayed the police’s requirements to someone in an outer office. He glanced up at the DCI.

“Is that all?”

“For now,” Thackeray said. “Except I was still wondering if you ever heard anything more from Karen. Those babies of yours must be getting quite big now. Don’t you feel the need to keep in touch?”

“If I thought they were mine I might,” Foreman said. “As for Karen? Turned out a slag, didn’t she? They’re all the same.” For a second Thackeray thought he saw real rage behind Foreman’s usual bland expression but it vanished before he could be sure and was replaced by a smile which came across as more of a grimace.

“Still with that red-headed lass from the Gazette yourself, are you?” he asked. Val Ridley hesitated by the door and stood very still though Thackeray did not reply and the silence lengthened.

“I met her, remember, when we had that bit of trouble wi′Karen’s brother?”

Thackeray nodded carefully, his heart thumping, knowing that there must be a reason for Foreman’s questions and frantically trying to work out what it might be.

“Laura,” he said at last.

“Aye, that’s her. Laura. I saw her the other day up at Wuthering. She was with that sergeant of yours, the dark, good-looking lad, the one who came over all heroic with the little scrote with the shotgun that time. Pretty lass. Make a nice couple, those two. So I just wondered if she’s buggered off and left you, an’all. A moment of fellow feeling, as you might say. Tarts!”

Thackeray did not reply. He spun on his heel and Val Ridley followed him out of Foreman’s office aware only that the DCI’s face appeared to have turned to stone.

Laura got home late, hair flying, carrier-bag full of food for the evening meal threatening to spill all over the floor as she struggled to close the front door of the flat behind her with one foot. She found Thackeray sitting in front of the television with an expression so frozen that even in her haste she could not fail but notice that he did not respond in any way to the scrambled kiss she offered the back of his neck. She dumped the shopping in the kitchen and slipped out of her jacket, flinging it onto the back of a chair.

“What?” she asked. “What is it?” Her mind skipped through the sorts of bad news which could have led to this reaction and her breath caught in her throat as panic threatened to overwhelm her. Her mind flew to her grandmother.

“Is it Joyce?”

Thackeray shrugged and turned the volume down with the remote control.

“Not Joyce,” he said quickly.

“Then what? There was a murder today I heard about it in the office …?”

“Not that,” he said. He gazed at the flickering images on the screen for a moment as if unable to speak.

“It’s you, I suppose,” he said at last, not looking at her directly. She slid onto the sofa beside him, trying to control a wobble of relief and trepidation in her voice.

“And just what have I done this time?” she asked, as lightly as she dared. “Or is it the Gazette that’s annoyed you again? I refuse to take the blame for the sins of Bob Baker.”

“It’s nothing to do with that.”

“Then what, for God’s sake? You sit here looking like a thunderstorm and won’t tell me. What sort of a welcome is that when I come in after a hard day at the office.”

“Was it, Laura? Was it really?” Thackeray snapped back.

“Was it what?”

“Was it a hard day at the office? Or did you find time to go and chat up Kevin Mower up at Wuthering? They make a nice couple, I was told. What’s that all about? And why didn’t you tell me you’d seen Kevin? That he was back in Bradfield? As far as I knew he was still in Eckersley trying to sort himself out at a clinic.”

“Ah,” Laura said more soberly. “That’s what the fuss is all about, is it?”

“So it’s true? You have been seeing him?”

“Michael Thackeray, I do believe you’re jealous,” Laura said wonderingly, a flicker of amusement in her green eyes.

“No,” Thackeray said fiercely. “I didn’t think I had anything to be jealous about. Until I discovered you’d been deceiving me.”

“Deceiving! That’s a bit strong, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Thackeray said. “People tell me he’s an attractive lad, our Kevin. I think even you told me that once. And we both know he’s not exactly restrained where women are concerned. So what am I to think when you apparently forget to tell me you’ve been meeting my sergeant behind my back.”

“I knew it wasn’t a good idea not to tell you,” Laura groaned. “But he asked me not to.”

“And of course you always do exactly what Kevin Mower asks?”

“Yes, I mean no, of course not,” Laura said. “He had his reasons.”

“And did you have your reasons too?”

“Oh, Michael, this is crazy. Yes, it’s true, I have been seeing Kevin, as it goes, but not in the sense you mean. I bumped into him quite by chance when I went up to the Project that Joyce is working at on the Heights. He’s helping out there too, working with the kids …”

“He’s supposed to be in rehab,” Thackeray objected.

“Well, I think it is a sort of rehab for Kevin,” Laura said. “He says he’s off the booze, but I’m not sure he’s convinced he wants to stay in the Force, which is hardly surprising after everything he’s been through. That’s why he asked me not to tell you what he was doing. He’s trying to get his head together before he decides what to do next. And there – you’ve made me break all sorts of confidences now.”

“And I suppose he’s been egging you on to investigate what’s going on up there too. You know how dangerous that is.”

“Not really,” Laura said. “No more than Joyce and Donna Maitland, anyway. They’re all distraught about what’s happening to the kids on the Heights. You know that.”

Laura reached out to take Thackeray’s hand but he shrugged her off and got up to stand by the window, gazing out at the shadowy garden where the bare branches made a faint tracery against the slate grey sky. Laura followed him and put an arm round his waist.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You know I wouldn’t deceive you about anything important.”

“To hear that from a bastard like Foreman …” Thackeray said quietly.

“Foreman,” Laura said. “Of course, he was up there today, as if he owned the place.”

“ …it was like being kicked in the balls.” Thackeray continued as if he had not heard her.

“He’s a seriously unpleasant man.”

“You don’t begin to understand just how seriously unpleasant I think that man is. And I’m not even beginning to be able to prove it.”

Thackeray leaned his head for a moment against the cold window-pane. Laura felt him shudder and tightened her grip.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You must know there’s nothing going on between me and Kevin. He’s found himself some female company up there anyway. You know what he’s like. But he’s as keen as I am to help sort the kids up there. It’s getting completely out of hand.”

“Leave it alone, Laura,” Thackeray said turning and taking her in his arms. “It’s too dangerous for anyone but the drug squad to be asking questions up there. Please, please leave it alone.”

But Laura stiffened in his embrace.

“I have my job to do too,” she said, her face obstinate. “It’s not as if I’m chasing after dealers or anything stupid like that. I’m just describing the effects, what’s happening to innocent people like Donna Maitland and the kids who’ve died. Someone has to do that, and if it’s not the Gazette, who will?”

Thackeray suddenly pushed away from her and strode to the front door without looking back.

“I need some air,” he said, before the front door slammed behind him, leaving Laura leaning against the window where he had been standing, too shocked to move.

“Oh, shit,” she said softly to herself. “One of these days I’ll blow this sky high, and then where will I be?”