Read Unsafe Convictions Online
Authors: Alison Taylor
The sky above Haughton and the moors was a dense, grey pall, still resisting the gusting north-easterly, which cut like glass splinters when it hit bare flesh. On his way out of town, McKenna stopped at the large garage at the lower end of High Street, where Craig should have been at work. He wasted ten minutes searching the racks which covered a whole wall, without finding what Rene had impressed upon him as a necessity, then he went to the counter, to be told that in view of the weather forecast everyone had already sold out of snow chains.
Traffic
hedged him in back and front as he retraced yesterday’s journey under Dent Viaduct, over which a toy-like train rumbled towards Dentfield and the station buildings crammed into one of Dark Moor’s deep gullies. Rene had told him the moor was so named because even the brilliance of a summer’s dawn was extinguished as soon as the light touched the earth. Glancing upwards as he reached the junction by the abandoned dye and print mill, McKenna saw for the first time how the enormous shadows thrown by the moor and the viaduct seemed to come together above the shattered roof of Trisha’s house.
Today,
he turned left instead of right, passing drab terraced houses, small shops, hairdressing salons, ramshackle garages, and two more mills, now producing compressed-air tools and recycled paper, before joining a new four-lane carriageway. Breasting a long, very steep hill, where ancient stone buildings stood cheek by jowl with the twentieth century, he accelerated as the road ran seamlessly into the motorway. The horizon to his left was broken by Hattersley’s multi-storey apartment blocks, built in the 1960s to house Manchester’s slum population before the city’s old heart was ripped out. Somewhere beyond the brow of the hill, he realised, was the terrace of four brick houses called Wardle Brook Avenue, where, in September 1964, Myra Hindley’s grandmother carried in horror, along with her pets and chattels and granddaughter, when she moved into number sixteen. In the dangerous imagination of the young woman with bleached hair and cruel eyes, Hattersley’s tower blocks looked like Manhattan, as she no doubt said to the thin young man with empty eyes and his own imagination, who slept, as protocol dictated, on the put-u-up in the lounge, although rarely alone. As the horizon changed once more, the tower blocks falling behind, McKenna wondered if number sixteen were still standing, and who might live there now, for Granny Hindley must be long dead.
The
twenty-odd-mile journey to Manchester’s outskirts took no longer than the two-mile stop-start to the city centre, where he followed traffic around Piccadilly Gardens before finding the street where Frances Pawsley plied her trade. Her offices were on the tenth floor of a tall, glass-faced 1970s structure, commanding a wonderful view of the city’s skyline, but the original interior decor now had the slightly seedy air of something past its prime.
Corseted
still in tweeds, she sat behind her large desk, at an angle to the floor-length window. McKenna sat opposite, looking down on the area where an IRA bomb had created as much devastation as the city planners, only in a much shorter time.
She
followed his gaze, her own eyes bright with malice. ‘That’s what your ancestor died for,’ she commented. ‘Are you proud of what he spawned? What’s the tally of death in Ireland’s so-called fight for independence, I wonder?’
‘
I’ve no idea, Miss Pawsley.’ McKenna’s face was stiff, his voice curt.
‘
Really?’ Ostentatiously, she arched her thick, greying eyebrows. ‘Well, there are certainly more innocent citizens lying dead and maimed than there are terrorists. We should take a leaf out of the American book, and bomb the Irish Republic.’
‘
That’s an appalling suggestion!’
‘
Why? You fight fire with fire. Jumping into political bed with terrorists might be fashionable at the moment, but believe me, it’ll end in rivers of grief and blood. Your sort of terrorism’s bred in the bone through generations.’
‘
Miss Pawsley, I’m here to discuss
your
conduct. You must save your thoughts on Ireland for more sympathetic ears.’
‘
Oh, come now, Superintendent!’ Frances needled. ‘You can’t pretend your past’s irrelevant.’ She leaned her elbows on the desk, jacket straining at the seams. ‘That journalist dragged your integrity right through the dirt, not to mention how her articles will affect your investigation.’
‘
Unlike you, Holbrook is not in a position to have an effect. I want to know how you found out what passed between Dugdale and myself, without any prevarication about lawyer’s privilege.’
‘
But it
is
privileged.’
‘
As Dugdale is not your client, rules of privilege do not apply, but in any case, I do not believe he spoke to you or to Sergeant Lewis. I think Hinchcliffe discussed the interview with you, without Dugdale’s knowledge, and you saw an opportunity to compromise my investigation.’ He paused, watching her florid face and narrowed eyes. ‘The legal profession is notorious for gossiping like housewives over the garden fence, and there would normally he nothing unusual or necessarily problematic in Hinchcliffe’s tale-bearing, but your disclosing that information in front of Wendy Lewis is a different issue altogether. It amounts to an attempt to pervert the course of justice, which, as you know, is a criminal offence attracting a custodial sentence.’
‘
Hinchcliffe’s entitled to talk to me, and I to him,’ she said imperiously. ‘You’d have to prove intent.’
‘
Oh, come now, Miss Pawsley. Have you forgotten your law? That responsibility lies with the Crown. I’m obliged only to arrest and charge you.’
‘
You wouldn’t dare!’ Her face darkened to a beetroot purple. When there was no response, save for a slight shrug, she snarled: ‘People say you’re a ruthless bastard. Did you know that?’
He
nodded. ‘And at times, people like me are necessary to any organisation.’
‘
Don’t you care?’ A wheedling note crept into her voice. ‘I can’t believe you don’t have
feelings
.’
‘
I don’t harbour the sort of feelings you’re suggesting, Miss Pawsley. They would interfere with the proper discharge of my responsibilities, moral and otherwise.’ He rose, and picked up his briefcase. ‘As a matter of urgency, you must ensure that Sergeant Lewis has alternative representation, and for the duration of my inquiries further contact between you is forbidden. I’m sure you’ll agree that you’ve placed her in a thoroughly invidious position.’ Looking down at her, and feeling not one iota of compassion, he added: ‘And I suggest you arrange your own legal representation with similar urgency. I shall make a decision about your future by the end of the week.’
Four years earlier, Colin Bowden had uprooted himself from his Warwickshire home ground to resettle, with little success to date, in the foreign soil of his fiancée’s territory. He met Vicky Lane, who was a courier for a Manchester travel agency, on a package holiday to Greece. She noticed him at the airport as she welcomed aboard the passengers, and rarely let him out of her sight for the next two weeks. He drank little, his manners were impeccable, and he treated her like a lady, much to her chagrin as the heat of a Grecian summer and the urgency of the holiday wore on. Their relationship progressed in fits and starts, punctuated by long separations when his time off clashed with her latest trip abroad. Eventually, she issued an ultimatum and, ignoring his own vague disquiet as well as his mother’s meaningful silence, he applied for a transfer from Warwick Police and presented Vicky with an engagement ring.
His
first two years in Haughton were spent miserably in a grim boarding-house, then he moved to a furnished flat in a converted chapel behind the High Street. Waiting for his interrogators to arrive, he realised how claustrophobic was the enforced idleness of his suspension, as if the walls of the flat were closing about him. He roamed back and forth to the window, glancing once or twice at Vicky’s postcard from Marbella, which was propped on the wooden shelf above the electric fire, and starting to curl with the heat.
‘
Oh, do sit down!’ Anna Singh snapped. ‘You’re getting on my nerves! You’re so tense you’ll drop yourself in it as soon as you open your mouth.’
‘
There’s nothing to drop myself in,’ Colin told her, but sat down obediently.
Irritably,
she flicked through the documents spread out on the glass-topped coffee table, her coal-black hair swinging forward to hide her dusky cheeks. She was quite exotic, he thought, even dressed in lawyer’s grey, with big, dark, black-lashed eyes to match the hair, and pouting, thickish lips glistening with ruby lipstick. Heavy gold rings stretched the lobes of her ears, and a bracelet of thick gold links clinked repeatedly on the edge of the table. Occasionally, she looked at him, pursing those ruby lips, and he decided that she was really very beautiful. The fact that he instinctively, and thoroughly, disliked and distrusted her had nothing to do with race.
‘
You’ve got to be careful,’ she said. ‘Do you understand? McKenna’s in a different league from the officers you’ve come across before. He’s quite ruthless, and doesn’t in the least mind making very big waves, or care who gets swamped by them.’ She paused, frowning at him. ‘I shouldn’t really tell you this, but he’s threatened one of my colleagues.’
‘
With what?’ Colin asked. ‘What for?’
‘
Even though you’ve all got separate representation, it’s vital that we solicitors keep abreast of developments. What affects one of you affects all of you.’ She shuffled the papers together. ‘McKenna found out Dugdale’s solicitor had talked to Sergeant Lewis’s solicitor, and started throwing his weight around, although why he should be bothered about what we say to each other is beyond me.’
‘
I imagine that depends on what’s been said,’ Colin commented. ‘And when, and to whom.’
She
turned her head quickly. ‘You’re not going to be difficult, are you? You must let me guide you in the right direction.’
‘
I’m not an imbecile.’
‘
You’re out of your depth,’ Anna said sharply. ‘This was the first big case you worked with Dugdale, and you’ve no idea what sort of stunts he might have pulled in the past to get results. Being a detective inspector at his age is quite unusual.’
‘
No, it isn’t,’ Colin contradicted. ‘He’s thirty-five. Warwick had several younger than him.’
‘
This isn’t Warwick,’ she said impatiently. ‘This force is bigger, more diverse, and has entirely different concerns and policing requirements. What bothers me about Dugdale is his local connections.’
‘
Why? They’re more use than hindrance.’
‘
Provided they’re not exploited or abused.’
‘
In other words, you believe Dugdale fitted up Smith, don’t you?’ Colin demanded. ‘Well, he didn’t, and I’m not going to say he did, to please you or anyone else.’
News of Fred Jarvis’s heart attack, and its cause, swept through Haughton the way fire ravaged the moorlands during a hot dry spell, when sunlight, catching a splinter of glass, could set the land alight. Rene heard a whisper in the butcher’s, as she was buying meat for dinner, then fretted her way in and out of the bakery and the greengrocery in search of greater detail. When none was forthcoming, laden with shopping she panted back up the hill to Church Street, dumped the bags on the kitchen counter, and telephoned one of her cronies who worked at the hospital.
She
was still in a lather when Linda rang. Her voice was soggy, Rene thought, as if it were drenched in tears.
‘
They think he’ll pull through,’ Linda told her. ‘It wasn’t a very bad attack, and he got to hospital fast. It was the shock, you know.’
‘
I’m not surprised,’ Rene said. ‘I’ve never heard the like, I really haven’t. You and your Craig must be out of your minds. Where are the little ones?’
‘
Craig took them to school, but he’s going for them at dinner-time so they can come and see Dad.’
‘
If you want anything, lass, you let me know. I’ll be along later to see Fred.’
‘
I’ll tell him.’
‘
He’s conscious, then?’
‘
Sort of,’ Linda replied. ‘Enough to say he’s going to rip off Smith’s head, and shit down his neck.’
‘
He didn’t! Fred doesn’t use language like that.’
‘
He does now,’ Linda asserted. ‘I thought I was hearing things myself, at first, till he said it again.’
‘
I never! Well, he can get in the queue when he’s better.’ Rene smiled grimly. ‘And by the way, Linda, you don’t have to put up with what that woman wrote about you.’
‘
Craig was going to phone our solicitor when we heard about Dad.’
‘
Yes, well don’t drag your feet. I got it from a horse’s mouth it’s libel to say a woman’s been raped or molested. So mind that newspaper gets told you know, before they print any more lies about you and Trisha.’