Gaynor
Holbrook’s feature article in a mass-circulation newspaper was read with varying degrees of interest over many breakfast tables on Monday morning, not least by Jack Tuttle and Michael McKenna in their cramped billet on Old Haughton’s Church Street.
The
village of Old Haughton was a mile and a half from the town, by either of the two roads which began at the town centre traffic lights and, diverging to embrace a huge public park, met again on Church Street. One way took in rows of mean Victorian terraces and gaunt-faced mills, turned sharp left at the Junction Inn, and entered the village by an old stone cross. The other way left the town via a steep hill, then levelled out along the park’s western boundary. Overlooked by St Michael’s Roman Catholic church and the gleaming golden cross on its roof, the road swept downhill past the presbytery, the Roman Catholic primary school, and the high walls of the convent.
Narrow
and meandering, Church Street was bounded on one side by tall iron railings, much in need of a coat of paint, that topped the deep retaining wall around the yard of All Saints Anglican parish church. Opposite was an uneven terrace of millstone grit dwellings, broken here and there by cobble-stoned alleyways. Some of the houses were ancient, with low, recessed doors and mullioned windows, the rest two-up and two-downs with back extensions and aspiring sash windows. At the end of the terrace, the weathered masonry of the sixteenth-century Bull Inn sagged against its neighbours.
With
the apex of its tall steeple symbolically further from heaven than the footings of the Roman Catholic church, All Saints church lay in a deep depression. Dense-growing trees filled the yard, their roots now breaching old graves and toppling angels, and bramble, nettle and ivy climbed unchecked around tombs and monuments and tree boles. The ground was ankle deep in mouldering fallen leaves, while more had blown in drifts against graves and the church’s dank north wall.
The
two-up and two-down dwelling that once housed the village policeman had been transformed, inside and out. Steel grilles covered the windows, surveillance cameras were bolted to roof and back extension, and each stout outer door had its own staunch defences. In the front parlour were four desks, four black leather swivel chairs, two grey steel filing cabinets, a safe, four computers, various telephones, fax, tape and telex machines, and the video-recorders and monitors for the surveillance system. Freezing air wormed through holes newly drilled in the window frame to accommodate cables, and raw wood showed on the door frame where a security lock was fitted. The room was quiet, save for the rustle of paper, the occasional click of a cigarette lighter, and the hiss of a large gas fire which, turned up high, still left voids of bone-numbing cold in the corners. Outside, in the bleak monochrome of a winter morning, swags of cloud, bellied with snow, threatened the steeple, and rooks clawed their way like paper silhouettes through the bare dark trees, flapping, as a wind rising from the north-east snatched at their feathers.
Rubbing
tired eyes, Jack reached the final page of the two-inch-thick transcript of McKenna’s meeting in Ravensdale the previous week with the force’s senior officers and the many other organisations with an interest in their activities. ‘Must have been a very boring afternoon,’ he commented. ‘The lawyers did most of the talking. Still, I suppose they always do.’ Suddenly, he shivered quite violently. ‘Couldn’t we take ourselves to the Bull as soon as it opens? They’ve got real fires, not to mention the food.’
‘
Maybe so, but there’s no privacy,’ McKenna replied. He selected another wad of paper from the many stacked on his desk, and handed it across. ‘And that’s the transcript of my interview last Friday with Superintendent Ryman.’ While Jack grumbled to himself about ‘bloody awful English weather’, and even ‘slave-drivers’, McKenna returned to the towering pile of police statements before him, turning pages slowly, making notes, flagging pages and paragraphs here and there with small yellow stick-on labels. Shortly after eight thirty, he heard keys assault the deadbolts on the back door, and a woman’s voice calling.
‘
Yoo-hoo! Anybody up?’ Without waiting for a response, Rene Minshull barged into the office. ‘There you are! Aren’t you early birds! Have you had breakfast yet?’
‘
We have, thank you,’ McKenna said.
‘
I’ll make a pot of tea, then. Or would you rather have coffee? And I’ve got some nice currant teacakes for later.’ Eyes darting around the room, she added: ‘I won’t bother cleaning in here today. You only got here last night, anyway. I’ll do the beds and dust upstairs, and I was thinking of making shepherd’s pie for your evening meal, if that’s all right. A body needs something solid when the weather’s like this. It’s bitter outside.’
‘
Shepherd’s pie will be fine.’ McKenna smiled.
‘
And veg, of course,’ Rene said. Pulling off thick woollen gloves, and stuffing them into her coat pocket, she added: ‘The two ladies will be staying at the Bull, won’t they? That’s if they get here at all. There’s snow on the way, and we could be cut off for days.’ She smiled, exposing a fine set of false teeth. ‘Never mind, eh? Happens most winters, and there’s plenty of food in the shops, although what you’ll do with all these fancy machines when the power’s off I can’t imagine.’
As
she went from the room, closing the door quietly, Jack gazed thoughtfully in her wake. ‘D’you remember those Greek plays we had to read in school? She’s like the chorus, isn’t she? Popping onstage every so often to make a pointed comment, then disappearing into the wings until she’s needed again. Let’s hope she resists the temptation to twitter to the rest of the old-biddy network in between times.’
‘
Stop fretting.’ McKenna reached for a cigarette. ‘She’s a policeman’s widow. She’ll know exactly when to talk, and when to keep her own counsel.’
‘
Unlike Ms Holbrook, then,’ Jack said. ‘You don’t need a law degree to know she’s well and truly breached the rules of
sub
judice
with all this garbage. Why don’t we shut her up with an injunction?’
‘
That’s not the answer.’ McKenna moved aside the statements. ‘Injunctions will simply encourage more speculation about a cover-up, of which there’s been far too much already.’ Searching for an ashtray, he added: ‘Anyway, her promised exclusive interview tomorrow with the grievously wronged Mr Smith should make for interesting reading. She writes with a clever mix of sensationalism and pseudo-intellectualism.’
‘
And poisonous innuendo,’ Jack observed. ‘She’s thoroughly tainted your integrity with that rubbish about your ancestors. Not to mention what people will read into your delayed promotion and mystery absences from duty.’
‘
What she wrote about my ancestors is perfectly true, as you well know. How you read it depends on your own frames of reference, which was precisely her intention; and my integrity, as well as yours, is already compromised simply by our being here. Everyone we speak to will be hostile and evasive, if not downright dishonest, and the outcome will displease, disappoint, or anger someone. As Holbrook so clearly points out, we stand to get our hands very dirty.’ Pausing to draw breath, McKenna went on: ‘The police see us as their worst nightmare, the public see us as a corrupt arm of a corrupted body, and for the media we’re simply page fodder until something juicier comes along. We’ll get a warning shot fired across her bows, but it won’t have much of an effect. She’s on a roll, as the saying goes, and I expect she’ll cross our path sooner rather than later. She’s probably holed up somewhere where she can keep her eye on the tragedy queen, if, that is, she’s not actually camping out on his doorstep.’ Catching the expression on Jack’s face, he scowled. ‘And I don’t want a lecture about my attitudes! In more honest times, Smith would be judged for the vicious pervert he undoubtedly is, instead of attracting maudlin sympathy from people who should know better.’
‘
Not a few psychologists believe some degree of violence is inevitable in marriage and other close relationships.’
‘
And comments like that simply encourage the outrages that Smith and his ilk choose to indulge.’ McKenna’s eyes sparked with anger. ‘You see them on television, you read about them in the papers, and you find them in the dock, displaying their suppurating emotional wounds, and laying claim to debts society doesn’t owe. It’s a lifelong revenge trip against the world at large.’
‘
You can’t jump to conclusions about Smith being a pervert because of what Linda Newton said at the trial,’ Jack added mildly. ‘And even if he is, it’s not necessarily his fault. Research points clearly to a genetic or pre-natal predisposition towards homosexuality.’
‘
What he chose to do about it
is
his fault,’ McKenna insisted. ‘He married under false pretences, abused his wife, stole some of the best years of her life, and tried to pretend all the misery he caused wasn’t his doing. Nobody held a gun to his head while he deceived and battered Trisha, and nobody twisted his arm to marry again. He’s indulging a monumental and parasitic self-centredness, and I shudder to think what might befall Beryl when her gullibility and bank accounts dry up.’ He paused, searching to express feelings which he believed were based on moral truth, but which, when voiced, seemed to be founded in bigotry. ‘I’m not condemning homosexuality, Jack, but I abhor the hidden misery people like Smith cause. They demand every available social and material benefit on the grounds that their alleged affliction bestows greater rights than the rest of the world enjoys. Their orientation
might
be beyond their control, but how they deal with it most certainly is
not
.’. Again, he stopped speaking, then said: ‘Still, my feelings don’t matter. He’s laughing, all the way from the open prison door to the bank where he’ll deposit his obese compensation cheque.’
The
sudden roar of a vacuum cleaner overhead drowned the last of his words as Rene set about her chores, her footsteps thumping around the upstairs rooms. Each roar from the vacuum cleaner was preceded by a squeak from its wheels, then, as the church clock began to strike nine, chimes echoed weakly from an old-fashioned mantel clock above the gas fire.
‘
That blasted church clock’s getting on my nerves already.’ Jack sighed, gratefully changing the topic. ‘It woke me up every hour last night. Not that I got a proper sleep, anyway. The bed’s too small. I haven’t slept in a single bed since I got married.’
‘
Maybe you’re too large,’ McKenna suggested blandly.
‘
You’re just as tall!’
‘
But not so heavy.’
‘
I’m bigger built, that’s all. I’m not into the heroin-chic look you and Janet favour.’
‘
I’ve always been scrawny. Janet’s another matter, though.’
‘
She is, isn’t she? And considering it’s six months since that awful miscarriage, she should be back to her old self by now.’
‘
She’ll never be back to her old self, and she can’t come to terms with her new one.’
‘
She eats hardly anything, you know. I’ve watched her in the canteen. She picks at her food, then pushes it away like it’s choking her.’
‘
She’s feeding on her guilt,’ McKenna said.
‘
Well, I hope you don’t unconsciously encourage her. Religious guilt runs in your veins, too, instead of good red blood. You might be at opposite ends of the spiritual spectrum, but the guilt’s the same.’
‘
My church was always more accommodating than the Welsh chapel of pregnancies out of wedlock.’
‘
You’re still into self-castigation. You can’t help yourself.’ Jack regarded the other man, amusement flickering in his dark eyes. ‘On those many occasions when you light another fag as soon as you’ve stubbed out the last, you mouth a couple of Hail Marys or something similar while you’re flicking your lighter.’
‘
Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘
And smoking’s another bad habit you foster in Janet. You should positively
dis
courage her, instead of offering the packet out of some twisted sense of good manners. Or’, Jack added caustically, ‘because of a mutual sympathy between addicts.’ When McKenna failed to respond, he said: ‘Perhaps we should get Ellen Turner to take her in hand.’
‘
What good would that do? We’re not making any impression on Janet, so why should Ellen fare any better? She’s a total stranger.’
‘
Exactly,’ Jack said. ‘She also makes the final decision about officers who are physically or mentally unsound and should be retired. In many ways, she’s got more clout than our chief. She’s certainly got more degrees. She could wield the big stick in Janet’s face, couldn’t she?’ He paused, drumming his fingers on the desk. ‘But more to the point, she’s a woman, she’s older, she’s presumably wiser, and she’s been there herself.’
‘
Been where?’
‘
Her first child arrived four months after that very posh wedding she had, so it was either extremely premature, or Ellen thoroughly enjoyed her engagement.’ Jack grinned. ‘And as she’s now got two more kids, she and Andrew Turner QC must be at it like rabbits at every turn.’