“Hell and damnation,” he said softly to himself as he pulled his mobile out of his pocket.
“Laura?” he asked as his call was answered. “Can you meet me at the Lamb? The shit seems to have hit the fan”
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Grim-faced, DCI Michael Thackeray replaced the receiver on his desk and gazed at the two visitors who had just arrived in his office.
“They've been taken to Eckersley,” he said. “Apparently the drug squad's running their operation from there. All done on a need to know basis and apparently I didn't need to know.”
“I'll go to Eckersley then,” Laura said angrily. “I'll get Victor Mendelson to go down and play hell with them about Joyce. But what about the rest of them? They won't have any big guns out on their side, will they?”
Thackeray swung round in his chair to face Kevin Mower, who was sitting as far away from his boss as he could manage and studiously avoiding catching his eye.
“What the hell have you been playing at, Kevin?” Thackeray demanded. “What was wrong with telling me what you were doing? It's not as if it's illegal. Or did you have some idea of what's been going on up there? That there was likely to be a kilo of heroin stashed away in the kitchen? Did you know that? It won't just be me asking when it becomes known you've been working there. They'll want you down at Eckersley too. Tell me you were playing some devious game of your own to find the pushers and I just might believe you, but Ray Walter won't. You can bank on that. He'll chew you up and spit you out. Is this how you want your career to end?”
Laura and Sergeant Mower's meeting at the Lamb had been brief. Five minutes discussion had presented them with only one course of action and they had walked across the centre of town to police headquarters together in gloomy silence to see Thackeray. The DCI had listened in increasing disbelief as Laura spelt out what little they knew before making the series of phone calls needed to discover where those arrested at the Project had been taken.
Mower gazed at his Timberlands without answering Thackeray's tirade. Then he shrugged wearily.
“Anyone could have stashed heroin at the Project. The estate's awash with the stuff. But I don't believe for a moment Donna Maitland knew anything about it. She's passionately against hard drugs. She lost her own nephew, for God's sake. But the kids who use the place? Who knows?”
“It's true,” Laura said, willing Thackeray to believe her. “Donna couldn't have known. It's just not possible, any more than Joyce could have been involved. The whole thing's absurd.”
“It's the drug squad you need to convince, not me,” Thackeray said. “And you'll find they think they've heard all that before. If Donna's in charge of the premises she has a duty to make sure no one brings anything in they shouldn't. You know that, Kevin. People have gone to jail for less.”
“You're joking,” Laura said sharply. “Donna can't search them every time they come through the door. Any one of those kids could have brought something in.”
“Brought,” Mower said softly. “Or planted, maybe.”
Laura glanced at him sharply.
“Someone who wanted the place closed down, perhaps?”
“You're going to need solid evidence, one way or another,” Thackeray said sharply. “In the meantime Joyce and the others are in a lot of trouble. Laura, I suggest you get down to Eckersley with a lawyer and get Joyce out of there, at least.”
“Right,” Laura agreed, although she glanced at Mower anxiously before slipping on her jacket. “I'll keep you in touch with what's happening,” she promised. The silence lengthened after she closed the office door behind her. Thackeray eventually stopped drumming his fingers on the desk and sighed.
“How long have you been working up there?” he asked.
“Three, four weeks,” Mower said.
“And the booze?”
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“I'm OK, guv,” Mower said, very aware that Thackeray
would see through evasion on that score. “They were happy with me at the clinic. It was an aberration. When I sat down and sorted my head out I discovered I could leave it alone.”
“I hope you're right,” Thackeray said, recalling the dozens of times he had told his superior officers much the same and proved himself wrong within days. “You're going to need a clear head to get yourself out of this mess.”
“So what happens next?” Mower asked, his face unusually pale beneath the beard.
“You talk to the drug squad, I talk to Jack Longley. But before I do that I want to know one thing.”
“That I wasn't dealing heroin?” Mower asked with a crooked smile.
“I'll take that as read,” Thackeray conceded. “I don't know your friend Donna Maitland but you and Joyce Ackroyd don't look much like candidates for Mr. Big up on the Heights to me. No, what I really want to know is whether or not you want your job back.”
Mower shrugged again.
“It looks like I may not have the choice,” he said.
“Stop playing games, Kevin,” Thackeray said.
“Do you want me back?”
Thackeray's chilly gaze weighed up the younger man, bearded and dishevelled in his jeans and sweatshirt, and softened slightly.
“If you want me to fight your corner, I will,” he said. “But I don't want to stick my neck out and then have you chop it off.”
Mower rubbed a hand over his face with a faint rasping sound and attempted a smile.
“Rita wouldn't have wanted me to pack it in, would she?”
“I can't answer that, Kevin,” Thackeray said. “What I need to know is what you want.”
“It's another two weeks before I'm due back ⦔
“It's about two minutes before I have to see Jack Longley
and tell him what's been going on up at Wuthering. And I've a murder inquiry to run.”
“Yeah, I heard.” Mower got to his feet wearily and opened the door. He hesitated only for a moment.
“I don't know what I want, guv. I can't pretend I do. It's not that I'm not grateful ⦔
Thackeray shook his head impatiently.
“Get down to Eckersley and talk to Ray Walter. Give him whatever help he needs.”
“Sir,” Mower said and closed the office door behind him.
“Damnation,” Thackeray said after he had gone.
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Later that afternoon Mower drove furiously back up the hill to the Heights and pulled up with a screech of brakes outside the primary school where a cluster of gossiping mothers with pushchairs and an isolated father watched in astonishment as he got out of the car and began pacing the pavement anxiously. It was ten minutes or so before the children began to straggle out of the school door with coats half on and bags trailing behind them to find their parents.
Mower had spent the intervening hours since he had left Thackeray at Eckersley police station where the drug squad had taken their time over interviewing him and taking a statement about his involvement in the Project. Ray Walter had arrived personally to see him sign it, with a sneer on his face that told Mower as clearly as any words that the DI regarded him as compromised.
“Nice set-up they had going there,” Walter said when Mower handed him the completed document. “Just a pity you didn't notice what was going on.”
“What do you mean,” Mower asked.
“Kids coming and going, in and out of the place all hours. No questions asked. No cash and goods changing hands on the street. Ideal. Just a pity you didn't suss it.”
“There was nothing to suss,” Mower said flatly.
“No?” Walter raised an eyebrow. “Never mind, Kevin. I
don't suppose they'll mind that you've lost your nose for an iffy set-up when you get kicked out of the job.”
Mower had not responded to that, battening down his fury and concealing clenched fists in the pockets of his leather jacket.
“Have you released Joyce yet?” he asked.
“We've let the old girl out. Real spitfire she was, demanding her rights. She's got a record for civil disobedience as long as your arm. I expect she's into legalising cannabis now.”
“Yeah, right,” Mower said. “And Donna?”
“No way. I reckon she's ripe for aiding and abetting even if we can't pin the dealing on her. We'll keep her here for her full twenty-four, I reckon. And the iffy king of the turntables, Sanderson. One of them must have know what was going on.”
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“No way,” Mower said. “Dizzy B's never been to Bradfield before this weekend as far as I know.”
“As far as you know. All I can say is you've got some dodgy friends, Kevin. I should think about that, if I were you.”
“There's nothing dodgy about Donna. She hates the drug scene.”
“Maybe,” Walter conceded. “Any road, your precious Donna gave me a message for you. Would you pick up her kid from school, she said. Got a little thing going there, have we, Kev? Be waiting for her when she gets out, will you?”
“Sod you,” Mower had said. “Sir.”
He waited another twenty minutes outside the primary school, watching the last stragglers crossing the playground, before he had to accept that Emma was not amongst them. His heart thumping, he hurried to the main door of the school and found a pleasant-looking woman putting files away in the school office.
“I've come to collect Emma Maitland,” Mower said. “But she doesn't seem to have come out with the rest of the children.”
“And you are?” the woman asked.
“A friend of Emma's mother. She's been unavoidably detained.”
“I'm Pat Warren, the head here,” the woman said. “I couldn' t just let Emma go with someone I don't know, you know, without Donna letting me know herself. But in any case, you're too late. Emma's already been collected.”
“Who by, for God's sake?” Mower's mouth suddenly felt dry. The head teacher's face softened slightly.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “Social services came to pick her up. They had an emergency care order. There was nothing I could do about it and I had no idea where Donna was, so I couldn't call her. I got no reply when I tried the Project.”
“Jesus wept,” Mower said. “Donna will go completely spare. She worships that child.”
“I know. I'm sorry, Mr â¦?”
But Mower had spun on his heel, his face pale and set, walking quickly across the now deserted playground where a couple of soft-drink cartons blew with the crisp packets in the sharp wind and out into the street where an alcopop bottle rolled in the gutter before he kicked it viciously across the street. It could not be coincidence, he thought. Just because you were paranoid did not mean they were not out to get you. And he was totally convinced that someone was out to get Donna Maitland and, through her, him.
“You could say that whoever garrotted him did us all a favour,” DC “Omar” Sharif muttered loudly enough to be heard across the incident room at that morning's briefing on the investigation into the death of Stanley Wilson.
“You could say that,” Michael Thackeray agreed. “But as far as I'm aware we haven't restricted the protection of the law to people we approve ofâ yet. Perhaps that's something you should think about, Omar. There's a lot of people in this town who might like to count you out. Now, can we get on and summarise exactly what we know so far, please. Val? Progress report?”
“Everyone's seen the post-mortem report, guv. He was strangled with a piece of electric flex. No sign of anything similar in the house. No evidence of sexual activity immediately prior to death, in spite of his state of undress. No sign of a struggle but some curious marks on his arms, under the shirt sleeves, which Mr Atherton thinks are fresh cigarette burns. There's no sign of a break-in and all the doors were locked so we have to assume Wilson let his killer, or killers, in and that he or they left by the front door, which has a Yale lock which would close automatically. No witnesses so far to anyone seen arriving or leaving the day before he was found.”
“What about regular visitors?” Thackeray asked. “Have the neighbours seen anyone coming or going at other times. My guess is that Stanley hadn't given up his interest in young men, but it's possible he never invited them home, I suppose. We need to know whether he had a boyfriend. And then there's the computer stuff. How was he distributing that? Did people call to collect packets with videotapes in them? Or did he post stuff out? Try the local post office. See if he was a regular customer there.”
“The house-to-house inquiries are continuing this morning,
guv,” Val Ridley said. “We'll bear all that in mind. We're still waiting on the computer unit at county to come up with details on what was in that machine. According to Foreman Security he was being paid into an internet bank, so it will take some time to get hold of his records although some of them may be in the machine as well. And if he was distributing the pornographyâ and the rest of the equipment and the copies of tapes he had stacked away there certainly indicates that he wasâ then there must be names and addresses somewhere.”
“If they come up with those sort of lists, you've been offered some help from the computer porn experts,” Thackeray said. “There are international databases available.”
“Some beggars get all the fun,” someone muttered but a scowl from Thackeray quelled incipient laughter.
“There might be hundreds of customers on Wilson's list,” Val Ridley said.
“There might,” Thackeray conceded. “It's a line of inquiry we'll have to follow if the list exists and if it seems relevant to the killing. But in the meantime we'll stick to the local angles. What about fingerprints?”
“A few apart from Stanley's,” Val Ridley said. “They're looking for a match with records.”
“Right. And it's certainly worth chatting up the local gay scene. See if Stanley was known and who his contacts were. Whether there's a boyfriend, or ex-boyfriends around. I think it would be a good idea for Omar to follow that line of inquiry, don't you?” Thackeray glanced across the room at the young Asian DC who flushed in embarrassment as a ripple of laughter went round the assembled detectives.
“Nice one, guv,” someone called out.
“By the book, Omar,” Thackeray said.
“Sir”, Sharif muttered, through gritted teeth.
Thackeray made his way back to his own office, feeling slightly ashamed of himself for baiting Sharif. But he could see no other way of impressing on him the fact that prejudice
worked in all sorts of directions than by forcing him to confront the reality. In a town where tensions were high and seemed to be rising, young Mohammed Sharif uncurbed posed a risk the police could not afford to take.
He sat for a moment at his desk before turning to the pile of files which had proliferated since Stanley Wilson's body had been found. He had slept badly after a devastating evening spent bickering with Laura who had returned from her grandmother's house aflame with indignation at the behaviour of the drug squad, who had released Joyce without too much delay but had decided to keep Donna Maitland and David Sanderson at Eckersley overnight for further questioning.
“You must know who the dealers up there are,” Laura had protested. “Donna's one of the few people who might actually be willing to give evidence against them, if she had any to give. Joyce too. And Dizzy B's an ex-copper and a mate of Kevin Mower's. What sort of impression are you putting across if you arrest the good guys and ignore the crooks?”
“Donna has a responsibility to keep the stuff out of the Project,” Thackeray had said, toeing the official line. If he had misgivings about it, he did not think this was the moment to discuss them with an already outraged Laura. “Somebody took that heroin in there. Somebody must have seen something.”
“Perhaps the police took it in. No one saw them find it, Joyce says. They simply announced that it was there.”
“Come on, Laura,” Thackeray had protested. “Your grandmother's view of the police hasn't changed much since she was manhandled out of Grosvenor Square in 1969, has it? Be honest. Times have changed. I've no more reason to think the drug squad's bent than I have to imagine you make up your stories as you go along. There's a few dodgy characters in any profession, but thankfully not a lot.”
“Joyce said they were thugs, most of them.”
“You don't get into the drug squad without being able to
handle yourself,” Thackeray said. “They're hard as nails. They need to be.”
“This was women and girls they were dealing with,” Laura objected. “Not armed criminals.”
“If there was heroin there, there might have been guns not far away. This is nasty, brutal, violent crime we're talking about, Laura, not a Sunday School outing. This is why I was so anxious when you went snooping around up there. Perhaps you'll believe me now when I say you're taking too many risks.”
“And perhaps you'll believe me when I tell you that some of those kids on the Heights were murdered.”
“Did you tell Ray Walter that?”
“I didn't tell Ray Walter anything. They wouldn't let me in to see Joyce. Victor went in and I sat kicking my heels for an hour till they both came out. Then I took her home and went back to the office where Ted Grant was doing his nut, of course, because I'd taken most of the afternoon off. I don't think I can put up with him much longer either.”
“What do you mean, either?” Thackeray had asked quietly. Laura had looked at him for a long time before she answered.
“I feel, with you, sometimes, that there's a brick wall between us,” she said at last. “I thought for a long time that we might be able to break it down. But now I'm not so sure. I think you've boxed yourself in there with your guilt for so long that you're never going to be able to break out. Aileen and the Pope between them have killed something in you, and nothing I do seems to bring it alive again for long. It's as if you're in a glass coffin. I can see you, and talk to you but I can't really touch you. Not in any way that really matters.” And with that Laura had turned away and gone into the bedroom where Thackeray, frozen by her unexpected assault, listened to her sobbing to herself for a long time before he dared to follow her, only to find her sprawled across the double bed, her face stained with tears, fast asleep. He had gone to bed himself, much later, alone in the spare room.
Wrenching himself back to the present, Thackeray suddenly thumped the desk in frustration and instead of turning to his files picked up the phone.
“Amos?” he said when it was answered. “Did you get anywhere with that little query I left with you?”
“I did, as it happens,” Amos Atherton said. “As you suspected, there was no match with the sample they provided from the putative father.”
“So tests were done, then?”
“Oh, aye. They were done when the babies were two months old.”
“But they weren't Foreman's kids and we don't know whose they were?”
“That's about it, unless they went elsewhere with a sample from another candidate, as it were.”
“Right,” Thackeray said. “I can think of one likely candidate but I don't think there's a cat in hell's chance of persuading him to take a blood test. It wouldn't do his case any good at all. Anyway, that's a great help. Thanks, Amos. I owe you one.”
“A pint of Tetleys'll do nicely some time,” Atherton said. Thackeray hung up with exaggerated care.
“I'll have you yet, Foreman,” he said to himself. “If I can catch you out in one lie I'll catch you out in the rest.”
For an hour he tried to concentrate on the work in front of him, but was not sorry when his door was flung open without ceremony and superintendent Jack Longley dropped yet another file onto his desk and eased his bulk into his visitor's chair.
“What the bloody hell's going on up at the Heights?” Longley asked. “I've had the ACC in charge of the drug squad bashing my ear for half an hour about out-of-control coppers and interfering reporters and general slackness and insubordination getting in the way of his operations.”
“I told you Mower got involved more or less inadvertently,” Thackeray said mildly. “He had no reason to think that
this Project they're running up there was anything more than it seemed. If indeed it is.”
“Well, according to the ACC someone's been running round alleging that at least one of the kids who's died up there was murdered. Was that Mower?”
“Ah,” said Thackeray carefully. “Laura certainly believes that some of the deaths may not be as straightforward as they seemed. She's talked to people ⦔
“Apparently Ray Walter thinks it's all a load of bollocks,” Longley said. “And given that not a single person has suggested anything like that to us, he's most likely right.”
“Laura's no fool,” Thackeray said defensively.
“Look, I realise you're in a difficult position where the Gazette is concerned. But have a quiet word, will you Michael? The squad's got a man undercover up at Wuthering and they don't want a loose cannon mucking up the operation. He was the one who tipped them off about drugs at the Project, apparently. As for Mower, you can tell him to pack in this moonlighting he's been doing and keep away from ongoing operations or he'll have no bloody job to come back to. He's lucky they didn't arrest him yesterday, from what I hear.”
“Right,” Thackeray said wondering where an ultimatum like that would push an over-involved Mower and fearing that it might be over the edge. To his surprise, Longley remained perched on the edge of his seat.
“I had Grantley Adams on the phone this morning too,” he said eventually. Thackeray said nothing, but his lips tightened.
“His lad's recovering well now,” Longley said. “He was anxious to know how far your investigation's got on the Ecstasy front.”
“I told Adams we'd want to talk to the boy again when he had recovered, but I don't expect to get any further. He and the girlfriend have closed up tighter than clams. Has the school taken any action against them?”
“Grantley's been throwing his weight about there too, I hear,” Longley said. “I don't know to what effect.”
“Well, I can't see there being any charges. The cannabis we found wasn't worth a fiver. Perhaps being booted out of their posh school is just about what they deserve. I didn't get the impression the head would worry too much about a little matter of evidence.”
Longley smiled, though it was a mirthless effort.
“I thought you wanted to pin Grantley to the ground,” he said.
“It crossed my mind,” Thackeray said. “He's an arrogant bastard, but you can hardly blame kids for the sins of their parents, can you? Not when we all pay for them in so many other ways.”
“Aye, well, I'd not know about that,” Longley said. “Anyway, keep me in touch, will you. The brass are not happy bunnies right now. I don't want to give them owt else to fret about if I can help it.”
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Kevin Mower glanced at his watch with some anxiety. It was half-past-one and he had arranged to meet Donna Maitland at twelve-thirty in the Woolpack in the centre of town. Dizzy B sat across the table from him with both hands wrapped around a pint of Stella Artois looking as tired and gloomy as Mower himself.
“She not have a mobile, man?” he asked.
“No, she's mislaid it,” Mower said shortly. “I can't understand it. She's arranged to be at social services at two o'clock to talk about Emma. She won't want to be late.” He had already called the Project and Donna's flat and got no reply from either.