Authors: Elizabeth Corley
The ACC looked around and muttered, almost to himself, ‘It would be so easy. Alan Wainwright, his son, his nephew, Jeremy Kemp, Neil Yarrell, Frederick Doggett, even James FitzGerald, they all are or were members. So easy to meet casually during a round, or even in the bar. No one would remark on it.’ A fresh thought occurred to him. ‘What about Neil Yarrell and James FitzGerald’s alibis for Fish and Graham Wainwright’s murders?’
‘Not watertight, sir.’
‘I would like the daily reports continued without fail. And if you find new evidence that implicates these people, call me, any time. I need to know at once.’ He looked Fenwick directly in the eye. ‘Make no mistake, Chief Inspector, you are already walking a tightrope over a very murky swamp, and if you fall, you will fall alone. This constabulary will neither be implicated in a cover-up nor will it wreck the lives of innocent people. That responsibility lies in your hands, Fenwick. If it’s too much for you, say so now and I will transfer the investigation to other officers. If you choose to remain the senior investigating officer in charge, be very sure that you know what you are doing.’
Fenwick shook his head in amazement. Harper-Brown knew Fenwick could not give up the case without damaging his career irretrievably, but this way the ACC would always be able to claim that he had counselled Fenwick to cede responsibility to a more senior officer but had been persuaded to let him remain in charge. If anything went wrong, Fenwick would fall and the ACC would be protected from anything worse than a reprimand.
‘I’ll stay on the case.’ Fenwick couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge the ACC’s superiority by adding ‘sir’, but Harper-Brown clearly didn’t care. He had the answer he had expected.
On his way back to Harlden, Fenwick called the incident room manager, who told him excitedly about how one of the researchers had spotted a link between James FitzGerald and
Wainwright’s. FitzGerald had an eleven-year-old conviction for tax evasion – not something that would appear on the police computers, but it had received some publicity at the time in the local press. In a spare hour, he had been trawling the Internet, looking for connections with any of the names Fenwick had listed, and found the article. The undeclared income related to a trust owning Wainwright shares. Fenwick asked to be put through to the officer and congratulated him on a great show of initiative.
As he broke the connection, his mobile phone rang again. It was DI Blite. Before Fenwick could say anything, the inspector jumped in.
‘At last! I’ve been trying you all day, sir. You must have been in an area with bad reception.’
Fenwick said nothing. He had received calls throughout his time in London, and there were no messages. As Blite started to tell him about ‘his’ big break, Fenwick cut him off.
‘Yes, I know, Inspector. The ACC mentioned it and I have already congratulated the officer involved. What else has happened today?’
There was no other news of substance and Fenwick broke the connection with a curt goodnight.
Nightingale drove back to Harlden with Sergeant Gould in an extraordinary state of excitement that wasn’t dampened even by the realisation that she still had a pile of record searches on Sally Wainwright-Smith to work through on her return. After two days of combing through every corner of Amanda Bennett’s house, she had found tape number 10, which now lay sealed and dated in an evidence wallet in Gould’s jacket pocket. Nightingale could sense his enthusiasm – and relief – as he drove recklessly through the rush-hour traffic.
When they reached the station, Gould left to have the tape entered as evidence before they played it in front of witnesses. Nightingale parked the car, then raced to the incident room. The Superintendent was there, as were Cooper and the office manager. Fenwick was apparently going straight from London to meet the ACC, so a decision had been made to hear the tape in his absence. Gould used a gloved finger to slot the tape
gently into the machine, and pressed ‘play’. The voice of the dead man filled the room.
As last words went, they would not have been memorable had it not been for the manner of his death, but they moved Nightingale nevertheless. She knew that Fish’s body was lying chilled beyond corruption, eviscerated and roughly sewn back together, and to listen to his voice made her think of warm lips, air breathed from lungs through a throat that she could hear now being cleared and then remoistened.
‘
My name is Arthur Lawrence Fish. Today’s date is the twentieth of April; it is four o’clock. I am the financial controller of Wainwright Enterprises.
’ A crackling silence followed, as if his few words had brought home to him the reality of his position, then he started speaking again. ‘
In my house at number one Greenside, Harlden, there is a concealed room. The access to it is through my bedroom wardrobe. In the room are papers, complete financial records, that prove Wainwright Enterprises has been involved in irregular financial transactions for as long as I have worked there, which is over twenty-five years. I don’t know why I’m doing this
…’ He had obviously started talking to himself, perhaps forgetting that he was still recording. ‘
If anybody ever hears this … But then I’ll be dead anyway
!’ Another sound; perhaps he had blown his nose. ‘
I want to make it absolutely clear that my wife and family have no knowledge of my involvement in Wainwright’s corruption. The policy that pays for my wife’s care is legitimate and the house is in her name. Not a penny of dirty money ever went into it – I saved all that – so it belongs to her and then to our children. They’re good kids, they deserve it.
’ The recording stopped abruptly, and when it started again after a few seconds, Arthur’s voice had taken on a different quality. It was no longer scared or belligerent, just desperately sad. ‘
I’m leaving this tape with an old and trusted friend in case anything should happen to me. She’ll see it ends up in the right hands. I’m not very good at farewells, and right now I feel stupid for even doing this, but,’
a deep breath,
‘just in case, I want you to know, whoever you are, that I never hurt anybody, ever, and whatever I chose not to notice, it was because of my wife. Don’t let her know about me, but please tell her that I love her, I always have.’
The tape stopped and there was silence. They weren’t eloquent words, but they were human and real. No one knew what to say, and there was a general shuffling of feet before DS Gould broke the silence.
‘I’ll make sure that an edited copy reaches his wife when we can release it.’
An hour later, back in the incident room, Nightingale stared at the photocopy of Sally Wainwright-Smith’s marriage and birth certificates and tried to blink her tiredness away. It was nearly ten o’clock and the night duty team had arrived. The fuss over the revelations in Arthur’s tape had died away, but the incident room was noisy with chatter as they settled themselves in readiness for the long night ahead. She’d set out to investigate Sally’s childhood thinking it would take only a couple of hours; instead, she’d wasted a full twenty-four hours, had had to suffer Cooper’s heavy-handed reminder of how important the job was, and had two pieces of paper for her pains. What was worse, they didn’t make sense. According to the marriage certificate, Sally was a twenty-seven-year-old spinster, maiden name Price, born in a little village outside Harlden called Potter’s Field, but the birth certificate Nightingale had managed to obtain after checking hundreds of Sallys born in the same year and month was for a Sally Bates, exactly the same date and place of birth. Something didn’t make sense.
She made her way to the coffee machine on the ground floor and waited patiently behind George Wicklow, the duty sergeant. Nightingale didn’t know it, but George had a soft spot for her. He looked past her Home Counties accent and the air of breeding that she didn’t even know existed and saw beneath them a young policewoman of exceptional ability. And she was beautiful too, in a rarefied sort of way. She should be out with a decent boyfriend – young Nick would be good, although police relationships rarely survived – not cooped up here, exhausted and surviving on caffeine and creamer.
‘What’re you doing here so late?’
‘Lots to do, Sarge.’ Her wry grin didn’t reach her eyes. She punched the ‘extra-strong’ button and waited the irritating
fourteen seconds that, according to the sign, assured her of a fresh brew. It didn’t taste any better.
‘Problem?’
Nightingale was surprised. Was it so obvious?
‘Trying to find out more background on a suspect, Sergeant, and I keep hitting dead ends.’
‘Local or out of area?’
‘Oh, a local girl, but that doesn’t help.’
‘Run the name past me, I might know it.’ George had been with the force for over twenty-five years, after all, and had never moved from Division. Nightingale acknowledged that they would never manage to substitute
his
knowledge with a computer record, but even so she was sceptical. Then she shrugged – what was there to lose?
‘OK, it’s Sally Wainwright-Smith, wife of the sole heir to Alan Wainwright’s fortune. According to her marriage
certificate
, she was born in Potter’s Field twenty-seven years ago. And I’ve got a choice of two maiden names.’
George Wicklow had gone very still at the name of the village, but Nightingale didn’t notice.
‘It’s either Sally Price, or Sally—’
‘Bates,’ he said in a flat voice.
‘Yes! How did you know? You’re a miracle, sir!’
But George Wicklow didn’t hear her compliment. He tipped his sweet tea away as if it was suddenly too rich for his palate.
‘Come to the desk.’
When he had made sure that the new constable he had left on duty was coping with the evening’s usual traffic, he motioned her to sit down on one of the hard wooden chairs out of earshot of the counter.
‘So, you’ve come across Sally Bates. My God. She’s, what, mid twenties now? She was a kid of eight last time I saw her. I’m not surprised she’s changed her name. And she’s back here; that takes nerve.’
‘Why, what’s she done?’
‘Not her, her father and mother. Surely you must remember the case of the Bates children? It was national news, a terrible business.’
‘No, but if she was eight, that was nineteen years ago. I
probably wasn’t reading newspapers then.’
‘Eileen and Frank Bates had three children: little Billy was nearly two; Sarah was about six months, I think; and Sally was eight. Except that nobody knew they had three children; the neighbours thought it was just the one – Sally. She went to school and church like a regular kid. Parents both went to church too, very strict by all accounts, and close with money, but nothing out of the ordinary, according to the neighbours.
‘Close with money, that was a laugh! My God, if only they’d known.’ George wiped his damp face with a heavy hand, and Nightingale tried not to look at him with concern. ‘Anyway, they lived in this big old house on the edge of the village, down the end of a muddy track backing on to farmland. Neighbours never saw Eileen Bates from one month to the next. Frank did all the shopping, and Sally walked to school, two miles, never mind the weather.
‘It was something really trivial that put us on to what was happening at the Bates house. Sally was accused of stealing at school and it came out that children had been missing things for months: pocket money, gloves, a scarf, but food mainly. The head teacher asked Frank Bates to come in for a chat. She was concerned about Sally, felt she needed some counselling, but Bates wouldn’t hear of it. Said he’d sort Sally out. The head teacher called Social Services and they paid a visit, choosing a time when Frank was at work – he was a mechanic, did odd jobs on the farms round about. Eileen Bates wouldn’t let them in. As they were leaving, they thought they heard a mewing sound, like a cat or a small animal, but at the time they thought nothing of it. They tried to visit a few more times and then gave up; that was one of the things that was criticised most in the inquiry later.
‘Sally’s behaviour didn’t get any better. She’d always been bright, but she started to fall behind at school. And she became so thin. I remember, when we finally interviewed her, she was a bag of bones; huge staring eyes, sores around her mouth, but a wild cat …’
Nightingale listened in horrified fascination, trying to match the sharp, sophisticated wife of a multi-millionaire with the scrawny eight-year-old, stealing tuck and pocket money.
‘Things became worse at school. The head teacher called in Social Services again and they held a case conference. After they’d been denied access once more, we were called in. The head persuaded the parents of one of the children Sally had allegedly stolen from to press charges, in Sally’s best interests.
‘I went to her home during that first visit. It was mid February but there was no heating on, no carpets. The furniture looked like stuff you’d find in a skip. Frank and Eileen were at home, so was Sally. She didn’t say a word; neither did her mother. Frank did all the talking. We had a bit of a look around but there was nothing suspicious. Next day, Sally showed up at school with a mass of bruises on her arms and legs – said she fell downstairs. Day after that she had a black eye. We went back with Social Services. For some reason, I don’t know why, I took some sandwiches and a chocolate bar with me. They were in a greaseproof bag in my coat pocket, and as soon as I went into the kitchen where Sally was with her parents, I saw that she could smell them.
‘She kept staring at me and at my coat. I’ve never seen such raw hunger, ever. It made my blood run cold, but it also gave me an idea. Whilst my colleague interviewed the parents, I picked up my coat and walked outside. The garden was just mud and a washing line. Sure enough, little Sally followed me out like a hyena smelling blood. I took out a sandwich, and I swear the child dribbled.
‘“What’s going on, Sally?” I said, and I broke a corner off and made as if to eat it, God forgive me. I was desperate to feed her, she was starving, but I wanted her to talk too. She wouldn’t, though, and in the end I gave in and gave her the sandwich. She wolfed down the first few mouthfuls, but then I saw that she was putting pieces of food in her skirt pocket. I gave her the bar of chocolate and she ate all but two squares.