“None at all,” Thackeray said. “Why do you ask?”
“I had Grantley Adams bending my ear again this morning,” Longley said. “Apparently he's persuaded the school to keep the two of them on to take their A Levels so he doesn't want any more repercussions from us. If there's no charges apparently they're prepared to accept that Jeremy and his lass
were drunk, not high, and that's acceptable for a sixth-former, apparently”
“This is the man who wanted the dealers locked up and the key thrown away, is it?” Thackeray asked. “And the headmaster who was so worried about his school's reputation that he wouldn't let either of them back in to collect their sports kit? So what happened?”
“Knowing Grantley Adams I expect he's made a hefty donation to the school's building fund,” Longley said. “Come on Michael, it's no good looking shocked. You know how these things work.”
“That doesn't mean I have to like it,” Thackeray said.
“You've nowt to charge them with. You've no evidence they were dealing. And what's the point of a caution for possession? The whole thing's a waste of police time. You've a murder case to deal with.”
Thackeray sighed, knowing that it was not the fact that two teenagers who had committed a minor misdemeanour were being let off which riled him, but the fact that Adams would be left believing that throwing his weight about had brought about the desired result. He was surprised that the superintendent did not seem to recognise the implications of that.
“Are you making any progress with Stanley Wilson?” Longley asked, obviously keen to change the subject.
“We found the boyfriend and he gave us a couple of new leads,” Thackeray said. “He reckons someone loaned Wilson the money to set up the computer porn business, so I've got Val Ridley going through his bank accounts to see if there were any unexplained payments. And Harman also reckons Stanley had a new attachment, a young black visitor, so we're getting him to look at some mug shots, on the off-chance it's someone known. The house-to-house has turned up a neighbour who's seen a black lad coming and going too, and thinks he saw him around the night Stanley was killed. And fingerprints have found at least half a dozen sets apart from Wilson's and Harman's. They're looking for matches but haven't come up
with anything so far. And of course if we can lay hands on a suspect there's the possibility of DNA matching.”
“Keep me in touch, Michael,” Longley said, turning back to the files on his desk dismissively. Thackeray got up to go, although Longley had not quite finished.
“Keep your eye on the ball, and you might make superintendent yet,” he said. Thackeray paused, with his hand on the door-handle.
“I don't think I could stand the politics, sir,” he said.
“Then you're a bigger fool than I take you for,” Longley snapped.
Â
Kevin Mower's small living room was heavy with cigarette smoke and the smell of lager consumed from the dozen or so empty cans which stood in ranks on the coffee table. Mower himself sat at the dining table in the window tapping impatiently now and again at the computer keyboard in front of him. He had been drinking but was not drunk. In fact his head felt clearer than it had for months. Laura Ackroyd stood at his shoulder watching the flickering monitor and Dizzy B Sanderson lay slumped in an armchair, can in hand, eyes half closed, the tinny rhythm from his Walkman headphones the only other sound in the room.
At length Mower let out a long sigh.
“Why the hell didn't Donna tell me?” he said. Laura put a hand on his shoulder, feeling the tension through the thin cotton of his shirt.
“What should she have told you?”
“She's been browsing round the Internet looking at construction companies, including these City Ventures people who wanted to buy the Carib. No doubt she downloaded whatever she found and that's what was in the file that disappeared. She'd have been much safer storing it in the machine, but maybe she didn't know how to do that. But what the people who trashed the Project didn't realise was that the machine keeps a record of the Internet pages that have been
visited anyway. So there we are, look. Let's have a look at it ourselves, shall we?”
Dizzy B got to his feet and came to look over Mower's other shoulder as he found the page he was looking for and a logo and a set of views of new housing and other developments in towns across the North of England spread themselves slowly across the screen.
“Looks like quite a major set-up,” Dizzy said.
“And Foreman's involved in that?” Laura asked. “I've never heard anything about him going into construction. I'm sure Michael knows nothing about it.”
Mower glanced at her.
“The boss is convinced he's making his money from drugs,” he said. “But I don't think he's got much to go on. Perhaps it's a whole lot more innocent than that. Perhaps he's just working for these people, sussing out suitable properties like the Carib. Or maybe he's just diversified quite legitimately into the building trade.”
“So why not say so, especially if it's a successful venture? He seems keen enough to impress in other ways,” Laura said.
“Maybe he's using the building trade to launder his drug money,” Dizzy B, who had taken off his headphones and was listening intently, suggested.
“Possible,” Mower said. “But bloody difficult to prove.”
“Does this tell us where this company's based?” Laura asked. Mower followed a few more directions on the screen and brought up an address in Leeds, with a photograph of an anonymous office building called Ventures House, and in small print at the bottom of the page a list of the company's directors.
“No one there we know,” Dizzy B said dismissively. “Foreman's not a director.”
“No, but his girlfriend is,” Laura said quietly. “Look, there - Karen Bailey's listed. The only trouble with that is that she's disappeared. Or maybe she hasn't. Maybe she's just keeping a low profile so that no one connects Foreman with this company which Councillor Spencer says has a good chance
of getting the contract to regenerate the Heights. I wonder if Spencer knows about the connection? Whichever, it's a bloody good story.”
“Or a bloody dangerous story,” Mower cut in. “Don't get too carried away, Laura. It's just possible that Donna was killed because she stumbled on this information.”
“Killed?” Laura looked at Mower in stunned surprise. “I thought ⦔
“What you were supposed to think, maybe?” Mower said.
“You've got no evidence, Kevin,” Dizzy B said. “Come on, man, she had her problems ⦔
“Yeah, yeah,” Mower said. “She had her problems, but were they so bad she had to slit her wrists? I don't think so. In any case Amos Atherton is sure that the cuts on her wrist were made by a knife, not a razor blade. There was no knife in the bathroom when I found her. It can't have been suicide. I never really believed it was.”
Laura felt her stomach tighten as she realised that perhaps Thackeray's concern for her safety was more justified than either of them could have realised.
“She always struck me as a fighter,” Laura said quietly, her grip on Mower's shoulder tightening slightly. “Joyce thought so too.”
“I need to have another look round her flat,” Mower said, his voice urgent. “Perhaps she's got stuff hidden away there that I missed.”
“Tell Michael what you've found,” Laura said. “He'll have seen Atherton's report as well by now, won't he? And you know how much he distrusts Foreman. This is just the lead he needs.”
“Yes, I'll talk to him later,” Mower said, although Laura thought she caught a note of reluctance in his voice. “Come up to the Heights with me, Dizzy, will you. I may need back-up.”
Laura glanced at her watch and pulled on her jacket.
“I need to get back to work. But I'll tackle Councillor Dave Spencer about this redevelopment company. Even Ted Grant won't be able to rubbish this story. It's all getting very smelly indeed.”
Mower drove back to the Heights in silence with Dizzy B slumped in the passenger seat beside him, headphones turned up high. Neither man seemed willing to talk and Dizzy Sanderson glanced out of the car window with increasing anxiety as they approached the tall blocks of flats which were almost obscured by the driving rain. He put his Walkman away as Mower parked in the lee of Priestley House.
“This place is beginning to give me the creeps,” he said. “I reckon you have to assume you're being watched up here â by both sides.”
“Probably,” Mower said. He glanced towards Joyce Ackroyd's bungalow where the glass in her windows had still not been replaced, boards facing the street blindly. “If I were the drug squad I'd have video cameras up here full time. But we're on the side of the angels, remember?”
“They might still believe you are, man,” Sanderson said. “But I reckon my credibility's all blown away.”
Up on the walkway as they made their way towards Donna Maitland's flat, Mower glanced down. The whole estate seemed deserted, as the rain gusted in bitter squalls across the muddy grass and the puddled car parks while the concrete of the blocks above and below them turned dark and streaky with damp. But even a casual glance convinced Mower that Sanderson was right. There were eyes which watched: here and there a curtain twitched and behind some massive dustbins he caught a flicker of movement which could have been a hooded head. But before he could focus he was distracted by Sanderson who had reached Donna's doorway first, to find the lock broken open and the door hanging drunkenly on its hinges.
“Shit,” Mower said angrily, shouldering his way past his
friend and into the living room, where a scene of devastation faced them. The television and video and anything else of value had gone, and the rest of the flat, from the bedrooms to the kitchen and bathroom, seemed have been systematically wrecked. Mower stood in the door to Emma Maitland's room, where soft toys had been ripped up and the pretty bedcover torn and tossed on the floor, and felt tears prickle at his eyes.
“Bastards,” he muttered as Sanderson came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder as he peered at the wreckage of the child's room.
“Her friends or ours?” Dizzy asked quietly.
“I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't both,” Mower said, swallowing hard. “If the drug squad bust in here the neighbourhood toe-rags would be close behind to see what pickings they could find.”
“Let's look for what we came for and then get out of here,” Sanderson said. “Though if your colleagues have been through the place the chances are they'll have taken anything of interest.” And as they picked through the remains of Donna's home Mower soon became convinced that Sanderson was right. No files, no computer discs, no paperwork of any kind, not so much as an electricity bill, did they find amongst Donna's scattered belongings.
“Zilch,” Mower said at last. “It's all been cleaned out and I don't believe the toe-rags took her phone bills and address book any more than the drug squad took the TV and video.”
“Let's go,” Sanderson said, his anxiety showing. “You may be able to get away with this, but I'm out on a limb here.”
“Right,” Mower said, following the DJ to the door, but before they reached it they heard a tap on the cracked glass panel and a postman, water streaming off his red and blue jacket, put his head round the drunken door, raised an eyebrow at the chaos and held out a single letter.
“Mrs. Maitland live here?” he asked.
“I'll take it,” Mower said. The postman shrugged and
moved on, leaving Mower in possession of an envelope which he ripped open without ceremony. Inside he was surprised to find a copy of a certificate from the Public Records Office in Southport. Why, he wondered, could Donna have possibly applied for a copy of Grantley Adams's marriage lines. With Sanderson displaying signs of increasing impatience he tucked the letter away in his jacket pocket and followed him out of Donna's wrecked home.
The two men made their way down the concrete staircase, which had been converted into a waterfall by leaks in the roof above. On the ground floor a woman stood by the glass doors, huddled into a thin mac and with a sodden scarf over her head, her face haggard and her eyes reddened with crying.
“I thought it were you,” she said to Dizzy Sanderson. “I were looking out o't'window and saw you come over here.” That was one set of watching eyes accounted for at least, Dizzy thought, not quite recognising the mother of Stevie, the young junkie he had only seen in semi-darkness a few days before.
“Mrs Maddison? Lorraine?” Sanderson asked. “How's Stevie?”
“That's it,” the woman said, clutching his arm in a frantic grip. “I don't know. I don't know where he is. He's run off, hasn't he? When he heard that Donna Maitland were dead he got into a terrible state, crying, he were. I've not seen him cry since he were a little lad.”
“He was fond of Donna,” Sanderson said by way of explanation to Mower who was listening with some bemusement.
“She got him sorted, did Donna. He'd never have done it without her,” Lorraine said. “But he were right scared when he heard the news. Said that if they could get Donna they could get him too.”
“He thought she'd been killed?” Mower asked. “Why should he think that?”
“Don't you?” Lorraine Maddison snapped back, verging on hysteria now. “Stevie thought they'd be coming for him
next because he saw too much that night Derek died. I reckon he saw someone he knew, though he'd never tell me who. So he's run and I reckon he'll be the next body they find. Can you help me find him? He trusted you, Mr. Sanderson. You're the first person he's talked to about that night. I could never get owt out of him, not a bloody word. I need someone to help me look.”
“This is DS Kevin Mower from Bradfield police ⦔ Sanderson began but the woman grabbed his arm and pulled him away from Mower.
“I want nowt to do wi't'police,” she said. “I don't trust bloody police. Look what they did to Donna. They're either bloody fools or in wi't'dealers themselves. Donna Maitland were t'best thing that's happened for the kids on this estate for years, and now look where we are. I just want you to help me find Stevie, that's all. I don't want any trouble, just to know he's safe. I've not got him off junk to see him killed now.”
Sanderson glanced at Mower, who shrugged.
“I'll wait outside,” he said, and went out into the downpour without looking back.
Â
Michael Thackeray lay back in his armchair with a sigh and closed his eyes as he listened to Laura clattering around the kitchen next door as she made coffee. There were times when he thought that the wall he had carefully constructed around himself over the years would prove impregnable against even Laura's best efforts to undermine it. And there were evenings when he slid imperceptibly into a contentment he had seldom known when he got home to find Laura watching the TV news or beginning to cook a meal. He had promised half-heartedly to hone his own rudimentary domestic skills and take a share of the cooking and chores when they had moved into the new flat, but deep down lurked an unreconstructed Yorkshireman who secretly believed that everything beyond the kitchen door was a
woman's domain. Even watching his father struggle with domesticity as his mother became increasingly disabled had not convinced him that there was an obvious solution to the boredom engendered by endless meals out of cans or a frying pan slammed straight from the stove onto the table.
Tonight his appreciation of Laura's cooking skills had been muted by the anxiety he read in her expression as soon as he came through the door. He watched her with a finger of ice touching his stomach as she brought a steaming dish of pasta to the table and served in silence.
“Did Kevin Mower call you?” she asked eventually, carefully avoiding his eyes as she twirled spaghetti round her fork.
“Should he have done?” he countered.
“He said he would.”
“You've seen him again, then? Any particular reason?”
“He asked me to look at Donna Maitland's computer files with him â and I've got a cracking story out of it, as it goes.” For a moment their eyes locked across the table, challenge in hers, fear in his, before he nodded slightly.
“I should have called him. We need to talk,” he said quietly. “Not for publication, but he turned out to be right about Donna's death. Amos Atherton doesn't think it was suicide.”
Laura hoped that her surprise did not look as feigned as it felt.
“You think she was killed?”
“It looks likely,” Thackeray said. “I've got a meeting with Jack Longley first thing to decide whether we launch a murder inquiry. If Kevin's up to his neck in her affairs I'll need to interview him as a witness. I can't get through to him on his mobile, I don't know why, I've left messages on his voice-mail, but this he'll have to co-operate with.”
“You should know why Kevin's so distant,” Laura said. “It's obvious, isn't it? When he lost Rita, I was at risk too, don't you remember? But you found me. You got me back. He'd never admit it, but that must crease him up.”
“Laura, that's psychobabble,” Thackeray protested, remembering the day when he had thought Laura might be dead. It obsessed him like a wound he dared not probe.
“Is it?” she asked. “Is it really? I've seen you watching Vicky Mendelson's kids. Don't tell me you don't resent the fact that you lost your son and she's got hers safe and well and growing into smashing boys. I can see it in your eyes. And I can see it in Kevin's too, when he sees us together and he doesn't think I'm looking.”
Thackeray glanced away, unwilling to go any further down that road.
“I'll need to talk to Joyce too, as she worked with Donna,” he said.
Laura glanced at her watch.
“I said I'd pick her up at nine,” she said. “She couldn't bear to miss her governors' meeting, even though it is a hassle for her to get to the school from here. She persuaded someone to collect her by car and I said I'd fetch her.”
“And is this cracking story anything to do with Donna Maitland?” Thackeray asked, hoping fervently for a negative response. Laura shook her head.
“No, except in the sense that she seems to have stumbled on it first. But it is about someone else you're interested in. Barry Foreman. It turns out his girlfriend is a director of one of the construction companies bidding to redevelop the Heights. And if that isn't fishy, I don't know what is.”
“His girlfriend? You mean Karen Bailey, the one who's gone missing?”
“Unless it's someone else of the same name, which seems unlikely,” Laura said smugly. It was not often that she reduced Thackeray to the state of astonishment which seemed to have overwhelmed him and she could not restrain a small smile of triumph.
“The firm's called City Ventures and they've got offices in Leeds. It all seems perfectly open and above board, pages on the web, lists of directors. I'm going to call them in the
morning and get an address for Ms Bailey. If it is the same person, then I think your Mr Foreman has some explaining to do. And possibly Dave Spencer as well. Ted wasn't in the office this afternoon but I don't think he can turn me down on this one. It could turn into a major corruption story. I think he can spare me off flood watch for that.”
“You're not thinking of interviewing Foreman are you?” Thackeray asked, trying to conceal his horror at the idea.
“Don't you think he does press interviews,” Laura said, her eyes full of mischief.
“With his innocent businessman's hat on I'm sure he does,” Thackeray said. “But if you start trying to trace his girlfriend then I think you would be taking a hell of a risk. You've already had Joyce threatened in her own home. You don't want the same thing to happen here, surely? The man is dangerous, I'm one hundred per cent certain of that. Don't go near him, Laura. Please.”
“I must,” she said. “If he and Spencer really are in cahoots over the redevelopment that's a major story. The Gazette can't ignore it. Do you really think Foreman's behind all the intimidation on the Heights? Is he under investigation for that?”
“Not directly,” Thackeray said.
“He's not your prime suspect?”
“He was a prime suspect long before the business with the gunman who left his employment so conveniently before he began taking pot-shots at hospital patients. Foreman got away with that and I've still got nothing I can pin him down with, if that's what you mean. That doesn't mean my instincts are wrong, Laura, or that he's not dangerous. Simply that I can't prove anything. I'll have to talk to Jack Longley in the morning and see what he thinks about the Gazette butting into an on-going investigation. I think it's a complication we could do without and you certainly could.”