Annette had said something funny and they all laughed out loud as I approached the table. They quietened as they saw me and Jeff pushed a chair towards me with his feet.
“Are you all right, Chas?” Dave asked. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
I shook my head and sat down.
“What is it, Charlie, bad news?” Annette added,
concerned
.
“That was the editor of the
Burdon and Frome Express
,” I told them. “He’s just seen a copy of the fax on his desk. Apparently, the girl in the photograph…Caroline Poole…four years later, in 1984, when she was sixteen…she was raped and strangled. Nobody was ever done for it.”
Annette said: “Oh God no!” and her hand reached out and covered mine. She pulled it back as I said: “I’m afraid so. We’d better take another long hard look at Peter John Latham.”
I rang my opposite number in Somerset. His euphoria
evaporated
when I told him that Latham was dead, so there was little point in coming to Yorkshire to interview him. However, we did have the man who killed Latham in our cells, and the two of them went back a long time. Maybe he could throw some candle power on Latham’s movements at the time of Caroline’s death. It had been a big hunt. Caroline had grown into a beauty, as predicted, and her face had captured the public’s imagination. We all remembered her when we saw the later picture that they’d used during the search.
Two detectives from Somerset said they would drive up and interview Silkstone some time on Wednesday. Wednesday morning they rang to say that they’d been delayed and they’d now be with us on Thursday. They
confirmed
that Latham did not appear to be related to Caroline in any way. Late Wednesday afternoon they said they were on their way and could we have Silkstone and his brief primed for a ten a.m. interview. They sounded keen.
Trouble was, Thursday morning I’d been requested to attend a high-power committee meeting, about catching murderers, chaired by the Deputy Chief Constable. I
insisted
that someone from Heckley sit-in on the Silkstone
interview
, and nominated Dave Sparkington.
The DCC considers himself an expert at murder enquiries. Early in his career he arrested a drunken husband who’d stabbed his wife to death in the middle of a bus queue, and that became the launch pad for his rise to fame. Fact is, the best collar he’s felt in the last twenty-five years is on his dinner jacket. He’d resigned himself to never having the top job, so he wanted to make his mark by creating the definitive programme for a murder enquiry. Something that would bear his name and be used by police forces world-wide as a
template
– his word – in their quests to solve the most dastardly
crimes of all. His name – Pritchard – would be in all the
textbooks
, alongside those of Bertillon, Jeffreys and Kojak. And he wanted me to help put it there.
They’d been meeting for months, unknown to me, and had commissioned a video showing how to examine the crime scene during those first, crucial minutes. It was good, which wasn’t surprising considering that the combined salaries of those involved would have paid for a battleship. They’d watched a lot of television, and remembered or made notes on how it was done. I couldn’t fault it.
“You all know Charlie,” the DCC told them. “Charlie has caught more murderers than anyone in the division, and I’m sure you’ll all be interested to know what he thinks of our
little
enterprise. Over to you, Charlie. What have we forgotten?”
I stood up, mumbling something, and told them how impressed I was with the film. As Mr Pritchard had said, those first few minutes were crucial and recording evidence without destroying other evidence was the essence of the early enquiry. “I thought the way the film demonstrated the importance of reading the complete crime scene, the overall picture, was particularly well demonstrated,” I told them, and the collective glow they radiated nearly ignited my shirt. “However,” I continued, “perhaps there is one small point that you’ve overlooked,” and they shuffled in their seats. All I needed now was to think of one.
I wasn’t knocking them. Some of us like to be out on the streets, some of us are more suited to administrative jobs. He couldn’t have done mine as effectively as I do, and I couldn’t have done his. Put me in charge of discipline and complaints and anarchy would reign. Give me the budget and we’d be bankrupt in a month.
“Context,” I said.
“Context?” the DCC murmured, his head tipped to one side, one finger pressed to his chin.
“Mmm, context,” I repeated. While we were watching their film I’d been thinking about the space video young
Daniel had loaned me, and it had come to my rescue. “The first men on the moon,” I began, “stuffed their pockets with the first rocks they found and brought them home. Frankly, they were a bit of a disappointment. On the last expedition, Apollo 17, they sent a geologist. He looked for rocks that were out of context, and found some interesting stuff. If you are looking for meteorites, here on earth, you don’t look on a beach. You’d never recognise them amongst all those
different
stones. You go to one of the big deserts, or better still, Antarctica, and set up your stall there. If you find a rock in the middle of an ice field it is out of context, and chances are it came from outer space.” I swept my gaze across them, one by one. Eye contact, that’s what it’s all about. They were all listening.
“In a murder enquiry,” I continued, “we do something similar. We look for the unusual, the everyday item that is in the wrong place. If you look in the dead man’s shoe
cupboard
– or the accused’s shoe cupboard – and find shoes, no problem. If you look in his shirt cupboard, and there’s a pair of shoes tucked under there, start asking questions. One of the suspects in the case I’m on at the moment is as bald as a coot. If I’d found a comb in his pocket I’d have wanted to know about it.”
“For his eyebrows?” someone suggested and everybody roared with laughter.
“I’d’ve accepted that,” I replied, nodding, and they laughed even more.
It was the buzzword they were looking for. “Context,” they mumbled as we gathered our papers and prepared to leave. “Context,” “Context,” “Context.”
Bollocks, I thought.
“Charlie.”
It was the DCC. “Yes, Boss,” I replied.
“Any chance of you giving me a lift to Heckley? My car’s in for a service.”
“Sure, no problem. What have we done to deserve a
visit?” As if I didn’t know.
“I’m wearing my D and C hat, seeing those two prats who got the car stuck between the bollards. Lockwood and Smiles, isn’t it? He won’t be smiling when I’ve finished with him, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Stiles,” I told him. “Lockwood and Stiles.”
“Is it? Oh.”
I opened his door but didn’t wait to close it behind him, and threw my briefcase on the back seat. On the bypass a speed limit sign went by at well over the stated figure and I eased off the accelerator. If you think being followed by a police car is bad, you should try having the Deputy Chief Constable sitting in your passenger seat with his discipline and complaints hat on. I said: “Bit over the top, isn’t it, Sir, suspending them and you handling it personally?”
“High profile, Charlie,” he explained. “The media are involved. Made a laughing stock of the whole force. I’m
seeing
them at two.”
“Right,” I said, nodding in slow motion to indicate how I understood his position.
To change the subject I told him about the Latham case and how young Caroline Poole had suddenly come into the picture, complicating things. He saw it as two clear-ups, with a possible third. We’re very extravagant with our
clearup
figures. Jamie Walker’s death would allow us to put every stolen car for the period he was out of detention down to him, and therefore solved. We’d just have to be careful not to have him doing two at the same time, in different parts of town. Perhaps we’d be able to put Caroline’s murder down to Latham. Somerset would close the file, issue a statement saying that they were not looking for anybody else. There might even be a crumb of comfort in it for her parents.
After a silence Pritchard said: “Never took you for an astronomer, Charlie. Interested in that
Star Trek
stuff, are you?”
“No, that’s fantasy,” I replied. “I’m more interested in the
real thing. Science in general, I suppose. Sometimes it comes in useful, like today.”
“I’m sure you’re right, I’m sure you’re right. And it’s good to have an outside interest. Too much work, and all that.”
“Yep. That’s what I think.”
Another long silence, then I decided to give him the works. I said: “Back in the early Seventies, when the space race was in full flow, the Americans sent an unmanned craft to Mars and took a few photographs so the Russians,
determined
to match or outdo the Yanks, decided to send one to Venus. Unfortunately for them the atmosphere was so hot that the lens cap melted on the front of the camera, and they didn’t get any pictures.”
“Ah! Serves the buggers right,” he commented.
“Being Russians,” I continued, “they announced it as a glorious triumph for the Soviet people and vowed to
continue
the exploration of space on their behalf. The scientists involved were invited to sit on Lenin’s tomb for the next May Day parade. The following year they sent another probe up, at a cost of a few more zillion roubles, but this time with a high melting-point lens cap on the camera. It also carried a device to scoop up some soil from the surface of Venus and analyse it.”
“Clever stuff,” the DCC said. “Marvellous what they can do, these days.”
“It is, isn’t it. And this time, everything worked
perfectly
. The lens cap flew off and the camera took a photo of Venus’s soil, which looked very much like any other soil. Then the arm stretched out and the scoop picked up a
sample
and brought it back on board for analysis.” I paused to let the pictures form in his mind, then went on: “Trouble was, the scoop had picked up the lens cap. They spent all that money, travelled a hundred million miles, to analyse something they took with them.”
He looked across at me. “You’re kidding!” he scoffed.
“According to the telly,” I replied.
“The daft buggers.”
“It was hailed as another Soviet success story,” I told him, “and the scientists were awarded the Order of Lenin and given free holidays on the Black Sea.” We’d arrived at the nick. I freewheeled into my space and yanked the handbrake on.
“Ha ha,” he chuckled. “That’s a good story, Charlie. A good story. With a moral in it, too. Learn from other
people’s
mistakes, eh.”
“That’s right, Mr Pritchard,” I said, adding: “And you’ve got to admit, it makes writing-off a Ford Escort sound small beer, don’t you think?”
He called me a devious sod, but he was grinning as he said it. I hoped I’d done Big Jim and Martin a favour, but I
wasn’t
sure.
Dave and the two tec’s from Somerset were in Gilbert’s office, waiting for me. They were a DI and a DS, and were a little taken aback when I introduced Pritchard to them. He’d insisted on being present and they weren’t used to their top brass being so accessible. After handshakes all round and mugs of tea for me and the DCC, Gilbert said: “Apparently, Charlie, Latham is totally unrelated to Caroline Poole and there is no obvious reason why he should have that
photograph
of her.”
Dave said: “The picture came from the
Burdon and Frome Express
, as we know, but they have no record of the buyer. If it was paid for in cash, in advance, and collected in person, they wouldn’t have.”
“Or he could have used a false name,” the DCC
suggested
, eager to help, but failing.
“So what does Silkstone have to say?” I asked.
The DI was a huge man in a light grey suit, with a clipped moustache and nicotine-stained fingers. He said: “We’ll start before that, if you don’t mind. The reason that we decided not to come up yesterday morning was because we’d done
some preliminary investigations in the Caroline Poole files. Or, to be more precise, Bob here had.”
Bob, the DS, nodded.
“Bob discovered that the names Latham and Silkstone were in there, would you believe.”
“Go on,” I invited. It had been a big case, and probably every male in Somerset was in there.
“A car was seen in the vicinity of the last sighting of Caroline. A dark one, British Leyland, possibly a Maestro. In the next three months the owners of eighteen thousand dark Maestros were interviewed, without any success. Two of them belonged to Latham and Silkstone. Or, to be more accurate, to the company they worked for: Burdon Home Improvements.”
When we talk to people in large numbers like that, there’s not a great deal you can ask. “Where were you on…” is about it. We insist on an answer, and then ask if anyone was with them, to confirm the story. If there was, and they do, that person is eliminated from enquiries, as we professionals say.
“This is where it gets interesting,” the DI was saying.
“Just one thing,” the DCC interrupted, to prove he was awake, and interested, and really on top of things. “Are the files computerised?”
“After a fashion,” Bob replied. “It’s an ancient system, from before the mouse was invented, but it works, once you find someone who knows about these things. At the moment, because it was an unsolved case, it’s all being updated to the latest HOLMES standard.”
“Good, good. Sorry to chip in.”
“That’s OK, Sir. Like I was saying, this is where it gets interesting. Caroline was last seen walking home from a school play, at about nine fifteen. Latham said he was in a pub at the time in question, twenty miles away. He gives one Tony Silkstone as his alibi, plus two women they just
happened
to talk to. When Silkstone was interviewed he gave
Latham’s name, plus the two women.”
“Were the women traced?” I asked.
“Yep. It’s all here.” He rattled his knuckles against the file on the desk.
“But you won’t have had time to find them again?”
The DI shook his head but didn’t speak.
“Right. So what does Silkstone say
now
?”
“Silkstone says,” he began, “that he was out with his
current
girlfriend at the time in question, a lady called Margaret Bates. He was a married man, and this was an illicit affair. He later left his wife and married Margaret. She became the late Mrs Silkstone.”
“
Cherchez la femme
,” the DCC mumbled, nodding as if everything was suddenly clear. I was beginning to wish I hadn’t brought him. Gilbert caught my eye and winked.
“Meanwhile Latham, we are informed, was playing fast and loose with another woman, called Michelle Webster, who was a friend of Margaret Bates. According to Silkstone he was terrified that his wife would find out, but Michelle was his only alibi for the night Caroline disappeared. He asked Silkstone to say that he was with him, and that they just happened to meet two women in a pub outside Frome, The Lord Nelson. Silkstone agreed, he says, and persuaded the two women to say that they’d all met, briefly, at the pub.”