Crossing the Line (Kerry Wilkinson) (29 page)

death and has a very distressing story to tell. It almost ties in with the message painted on your son’s wall . . .’

Jessica wanted one thing to happen – for Niall to look her in the eye and say he didn’t know what

she was talking about. All it would take was a slight shift in his vision and she’d trust herself to know that he was telling the truth. One second passed. Then another. And another. Niall’s gaze didn’t move

from the floor.

She watched his chest rise and fall: a man ageing in front of her. His reply was more a breath than a

statement. ‘It was a different time . . .’ Oh, fuck.

He breathed in deeply, finding his voice. ‘Is this why they’ve been taken?’

‘I don’t know.’

Jessica didn’t have a better reply and suddenly Hambleton wouldn’t stop. ‘You don’t know what it

was like; there was so much pressure – it was everywhere you looked. You’d come to the station and

you’d see it in everyone’s face. At the supermarket, filling up the car with petrol, the workers, the

members of the public, you’d see how frightened they were, people not wanting to look each other in

the eye. It was in every paper, on every news broadcast, day after day after day.’

Jessica had wanted the truth but now, more than anything, she wanted him to stop. Now she was

back to asking questions she didn’t want to know the answers to.

‘What happened?’

‘Do you know who’s got Zac and Poppy?’

‘No – but it’s like anything else; the more background we have, the more we have to look into.’

Niall sighed loudly, defeated. He must have known something like this could happen. ‘It was like I

told you; I’d followed Rawlinson from the cleaning company to his house with the big drum of that

blue cleaning fluid in his car. It was a complete fluke that I saw him but I did a bit of digging and he fitted the profile perfectly. He was a divorced male, right age, knowledge of the area – he was what

we were looking for. Then we got a warrant for the house and it was all there too. We found women’s

clothes that weren’t his ex-wife’s, stacks of pornography – really hardcore stuff, violent movies – and

the bleach too. He said the women’s clothes were his wife’s, then changed his story to say he’d stolen

them from washing lines over successive years. He reckoned he’d taken the cleaning solution by

mistake, then said he was actually stealing it to sell to a rival company. Every time you’d catch him

on something, he’d change his story to something slightly different.’

‘What did you do?’

‘It wasn’t just me!’

And with that, any degree of sympathy Jessica had for former Detective Superintendent Niall

Hambleton evaporated. There were plenty of things she’d done that she wasn’t proud of but she’d

always take responsibility for them if and when the time came.

‘Who?’ she whispered.

‘Thorpe. He was convinced – we all wanted it over with. We
really
thought it was him.’

Jessica had forgotten that both Hambleton and the then DCI Thorpe got promotions following the

arrest. ‘What did you do?’

‘He had no alibi because he lived alone but everything else was circumstantial. He’d lied so often

but it was only about little things – stealing, perving.’

‘You knew it wouldn’t be enough.’

Niall put his hands on his knees, pressing back into the seat and closing his eyes. ‘He kept saying

over and over it wasn’t him. We thought he was goading us because we couldn’t find the knife. We

had the reports of the type of weapon used, so knew what we were looking for. One day Thorpe

turned up with exactly what we were after. It was like a butcher’s knife but made from a single piece

of stainless steel. I thought it was
the
weapon but he said he’d found it at a hardware store in the city.

I didn’t understand at first but we both knew Rawlinson was guilty and he said it was the icing on the

cake to make sure he didn’t get off.’

He opened his eyes, searching for Jessica’s, pleading, wanting her to understand, but she couldn’t

bring herself to look at him.

‘We went out to the house and buried it in the garden. Later, the full excavation was ordered and it

was found. There were no fingerprints though, so it was still touch and go. Thorpe said we needed a

confession . . .’

Niall’s Adam’s apple began to bob but he just about held himself together. Jessica didn’t want to

hear the details and he didn’t offer anything.

When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper. ‘What about the kids?’

Jessica ignored him. ‘What happened to the actual Slasher?’

Another sigh. ‘There were no more killings and I suppose I convinced myself over the years that it

was him after all. There was always the circumstantial stuff and I assumed he was just a tough bastard

who wouldn’t give it up. Rawlinson denied it throughout the trial but that’s what they do, isn’t it?

Afterwards, Thorpe never mentioned it again.’

‘Didn’t it occur to you that there were no more murders because you’d given the guy a free pass?

He either went to ground, or learned from his mistakes and became smarter. Perhaps the profile was

correct and after breaking up with his wife, they got back together? Or he found someone else? Maybe

he’s been killing women quietly for years but thought of a better way to get rid of the bodies?’

Niall shrugged sullenly. It was so dismissive that Jessica had to ball her fists, digging her nails into her palms to try to control her anger. She knew what she had to do next and being angry couldn’t be a

part of it.

She kept her tone calm: ‘In the pub, you told me things aren’t all black and white and that there are

shades of grey – but there are no shades in this. You planted evidence and beat a confession out of

someone just because you were under pressure. I’m going to fetch DCI Cole, we’re going to get the

super on the phone – and you can tell them exactly what you’ve told me. Then we’re going to

investigate everyone who’s got a grudge against you. Once that’s done, we’re going to find your

grandkids. Whoever has them left you a message to confess – and whatever happens to them is on

your head.’

30

DCI Cole leant back into his office chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Jessica didn’t know how he

would take things but he’d been like the officer she used to know. No snap judgements, no emotions –

he simply acted. Niall had repeated everything he’d told her and more.

So much detail.

It was no wonder Colin Rawlinson had confessed – it was either that or leave the cells in a bag.

Throughout, Niall insisted that he hadn’t done anything else wrong in his career. It was a one-off, a

lack of judgement while under pressure from a senior officer. If the abduction of his grandchildren

was related then it could only be something to do with Rawlinson wanting revenge from beyond the

grave.

Cole had the superintendent and chief constable on conference call and they’d done all they could.

A team of sergeants and constables had been put together to find out everything possible on

Rawlinson. Were there any other family members? Sympathetic cellmates? They’d not been given the

reason but they would know soon enough.

While that was going on, the most senior members of Greater Manchester Police were in crisis

mode. Thankfully it went far above either Jessica or Cole but she could guess what would be

happening – either another conference call or tea and biscuits at headquarters. Point one on the

agenda: how fucked are we? Point two: how can we make sure none of the blame comes back to us?

Cole looked across his desk to Jessica. After hours of recriminations, it was down to just them.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

Usually, it was the question Jessica hated the most. It was such a woolly nothingness – an endless

roundabout of meaningless words that people constantly asked each other. You’ve just lost a leg in a

horrific accident and people want to know if you’re all right. Your whole family’s gone in a house

fire, are you okay? On and on.

This time, she was grateful, even if she didn’t have a proper answer. ‘It’s been a long morning.’

A knowing smile. ‘How was Jake?’

‘All right, actually. It was no wonder he didn’t want to speak about visiting his dad in prison. He

was already wary of us and then I brought him in on some spurious movie-copying shite and

reinforced everything his dad had told him.’

‘You weren’t to know.’

It was little consolation.

‘I told him about Niall and the missing kids. He really doesn’t know anything about the kidnap. He

wanted to know about having his dad’s name cleared and I said there was likely to be some sort of

investigation—’

‘More like a full-on inquiry. Front-page headlines, top of the news, bells, whistles. Things are

going to change.’

‘Quite. Either way, I gave him a lift home and let him have all my phone numbers. He seemed

satisfied enough for now. If it was me, I don’t think I’d have been as calm as he was. He was still

asking if we were going to push charges for the copied discs. I told him we’d let it slide but even that felt wrong – we’ve got more pirated discs floating around here than he had.’

Cole offered a slight shrug. ‘If you’d not got him in here, he’d have never told you about DSI

Hambleton. If it leads to the exoneration of an innocent man, charges against a corrupt officer and we

find those kids, then you’ll have done all right. Better than all right.’

Jessica looked him in the eyes. ‘Do you think that’s what Niall thought? Does the end justify the

means?’

‘You can’t compare what he did to you bringing Jake in. There are shades of grey in everything.’

There it was again – the same thing Niall had said. The problem was knowing where that line had

to be drawn. Jessica wondered if she knew.

‘What’s going to happen to Niall?’

‘He’s gone back to the son’s house for now while everyone decides what to do with him. You

wonder what Brendan’s going to think when he finds out the reason his kids are missing is probably

down to his dad. Niall’s going to lose everything and then he’s probably going to go to prison. We

need to find the kids first.’

It was still less of a punishment than Colin Rawlinson had been given.

‘Louise, Izzy and Dave are all on it but did you think . . .’

‘. . . that the Slasher is still on the loose all these years later? We can’t run a full reinvestigation of that as well. It’ll come.’

‘What if whoever was the Slasher took the children?’

‘If that’s true then we’ll have to find it out through our regular investigation into getting the kids

back. We have no reason to think that might be the case and no resources to go through all of the old

Slasher information. Plus, why would they?’

A knock on the glass behind her saved Jessica from admitting she didn’t know. Izzy was waved into

the office but Jessica was already on her feet, reading the constable’s face. They had a lead on

Hambleton’s grandchildren.

31

The trip up the M61 to Westhoughton had been the usual mix of blinking red brake lights, frozen

verges and fellow motorists panicking when they saw the flashing blue lights in their wing mirrors.

And people said Jessica was a bad driver.

Local police had already visited William Overton’s house and confirmed there were no signs of

life. Jessica was in the back of the pool car with a uniformed PC, another PC was driving and Cole

was in the passenger seat. Jessica read through everything they had on Overton. Now in his late

sixties, he’d spent large parts of the last thirty-five years in prisons around the country for all manner of offences ranging from defrauding pensioners to battering someone with an axe handle in a pub car

park.

He was someone for whom the law was clearly an inconvenience – but what really interested them

was the six years he’d spent as Colin Rawlinson’s cellmate after being caught trying to drive through

the Queensway Tunnel on Merseyside with two kilos of cocaine in his boot.

He’d been released three months earlier on licence but had missed an appointment with probation

the previous day and wasn’t answering his phone. In the only recent photo they had of him, he was

sporting the same grey-black stubble as the kidnapper. It was hardly conclusive but, sometimes, two

plus two equalled four. Actually, it always equalled four.

Daylight was just about clinging on as they arrived in a street flanked by long red-bricked terraces.

Parked cars were on both sides of the road, funnelling all through traffic into a single line down the

centre. Local police had sealed off both ends, with curious residents watching from their doors as

officers massed around Overton’s end-of-terrace house.

Jessica could feel the pressure from the small army of camera-phone-carrying residents across the

road. A handful of officers were trying to make everyone move along, assuring them the half-dozen

police cars, collection of suited CID officers and almost two dozen uniformed officers gathering at

the end of a usually quiet residential street was ‘nothing to see’.

One of the local PCs approached Cole and Jessica, telling them he’d spoken to Overton’s next-

door neighbour and the residents across the road. All of them had the same story: they’d not seen him

in days. He then introduced them to a worried-looking middle-aged man brandishing a large set of

keys. Overton’s landlord apparently owned around a third of the street and had turned up when he’d