Dirty Old Town

by L M Krier

  ‘We have the bleeding under control so he’s considered to be out of danger now. It’s routine to want to keep him in at least overnight after something like this. We would normally suggest that he talks to one of our colleagues from the Psychiatric unit before he leaves. If he’ll allow us to help him, that is.’

  Bill opened his mouth to ask when they could see him but the doctor cut in, sensing the question he was about to pose.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to see anyone for the moment. Again that’s fairly normal behaviour with something like this. I’ve given him something to settle him, so the best thing I can suggest is for you to give him a bit of time to rest. You might as well go home, then phone in the morning for an update.

  ‘I know it’s a dreadful cliché but he really is in the best possible hands.’

  It was late by the time Ted got back home. He’d had a long and sometimes heated discussion with Bill on the drive back about how Steve had managed to slip through the net without anyone noticing how much he was being affected by the current case.

  Ted was anxious not to leave Bill on his own until he was as confident as he could be that he wasn’t about to do something similar, because he was still busily beating himself up about Steve. He sat with him while he drank a couple of large glasses of Scotch, then saw him safely upstairs and settled before he felt happy to leave him.

  Trev had clearly been waiting up for him but had fallen asleep in front of the television with the cats. Adam woke as soon as Ted entered the room, then jumped down from the sofa and went to wind himself in and out of his legs. He was purring his contentment to see his favourite human back home safely.

  Ted picked him up, to Adam’s delight, and held the squirming, purring cat against his chest as he stood for a moment, watching Trev sleep. It usually took loud noise and a fair amount of shaking to wake him when he was deeply asleep. He seemed to sense Ted’s gaze on him, though, as he stirred, stretched like one of the felines surrounding him and opened his eyes.

  ‘Hey, you. I was trying to stay awake for when you got home but I must have dropped off. Are you all right? How’s Steve? And how long have you been standing there staring at me? From anyone else, that would be a bit pervy.’

  Ted smiled and sat down as Trev made room for him by rearranging cats.

  ‘You looked too peaceful to wake. Steve’s out of danger for now, but he still has a long way to go before he’s okay.’

  ‘What happened? Did he get assaulted again? Poor sod.’

  ‘I can’t really talk about it.’

  Trev looked at him shrewdly, reading the unsaid meaning behind his words.

  ‘Oh, crap, Ted. A suicide attempt? Is that it? It is, isn’t it? I can tell by your face. Poor Steve. Is he going to be all right? What drove him to that? Is he going to be able to go back to work? Always assuming he wants to, of course.’

  Ted leaned his head back against the cushions, exhausted and emotionally drained. He was still cradling the little cat in his arms.

  ‘Physically, he’s out of danger, they told us. But he’s got a long and difficult road ahead of him, if he wants to come back to Serious Crime, after something like this. He perhaps doesn’t yet realise quite how difficult.’

  Superintendent Debra Caldwell echoed Ted’s words from the night before when he went to her office first thing the following morning, to tell her about Steve. Even before he spoke, she sensed it was not going to be good news, so she put a cup of coffee in front of him without asking, then sat down to listen.

  She didn’t interrupt Ted as he gave her all the details, ending up with, ‘Steve’s been on this case since it started, because he was the only one available when the call came in. He has been getting a bit obsessed with it, and with his theory of what might have happened. I should probably have pulled him off it sooner, but he’s been working on it with Jo, so I thought that might be all right.’

  ‘There’s no point in recriminations at this stage, Ted. Certainly not any self-blaming. Let me have a full detailed report as soon as you can, please. We’ll certainly have to look into any possible failures in the system, and what we need to do about them in future.

  ‘We both know that when he’s ready to come back to work, it can’t be straight back to CID. Certainly not to Serious Crime. He’ll need to be seen by Occupational Health, of course, and there’s a long road ahead of him before he rejoins the team. Assuming he even wants to do that, after something like this.’

  ‘I had an idea about that. I didn’t sleep well last night, going over it all in my mind. I’d like to see Steve come back to us one day, if it’s what he wants to do and he’s up to it. I wondered, in the short-term, if he could fill in for Océane while she’s away. I know it’s a civilian post and they may have filled it already. But Steve’s almost as good as she is and it might be exactly what he needs, when he’s ready to come back.’

  ‘We may be jumping the gun, of course,’ the Ice Queen told him, scribbling herself a note on the pad on her desk. ‘But I’ll certainly look into that possibility. I think it would be important to have a route back to offer to DC Ellis, if and when he feels ready to return.’

  Ted opened his mouth to speak but she interrupted him, ‘And yes, before you say anything, I know the situation leaves you one team member down. The ideal solution is to second someone on a temporary basis from another division. Let me know if that’s not possible, for any reason, and I’ll look at bringing someone in from outside.’

  Ted drained his coffee and stood up.

  ‘Now I need to go and tell the team as much as I can about what’s happened. And I don’t expect that will be easy.’

  Ted took Maurice and Jezza to one side before the morning briefing. They were closest to Steve of any of the team. Jezza in particular. He wouldn’t disclose confidential information, not even to them, but he knew Jezza was bright enough to join up the dots for both of them.

  ‘I’ll tell the others shortly but I wanted you two to hear it first. Sergeant Baxter and I had to take Steve to hospital last night. He’d injured himself. He had serious injuries to both his wrists.’

  He was looking at Jezza as he said it. He could see straight away that she understood.

  ‘Oh, shit. Is he all right?’

  ‘Hopefully he will be. He didn’t want to see either of us last night, but they said he was out of danger.’

  Maurice was a few seconds behind catching on. He was frowning his concern.

  ‘You mean Steve tried to ...’

  ‘He was injured, Maurice,’ Ted repeated. ‘That’s all anyone needs to know at this stage.’

  ‘Can he come back from this, boss?’ Jezza asked him. ‘If he even wants to, I mean?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be up to me alone to decide, Jezza, and it’s not something I’ve had first-hand experience of before. So I simply don’t know. If he wants to do it and it can be done, you know he’ll have my backing.’

  Friday afternoon, and the team members were starting to wind down for the weekend. Steve was out of hospital and back home with Bill who, when he wasn’t at work, was doing his best to look after him and to get him to talk. Steve was still refusing visits from any of his close colleagues, even Jezza, but apart from being even quieter than usual, Bill reported he seemed to be improving and was even talking about getting back to work in a desk job, away from Serious Crime for now.

  The Ice Queen had pulled some strings behind the scenes – something she was good at – and Steve had been offered the opportunity to fill in for Océane whilst she was in the States. There was also talk of him taking some accumulated leave and going to visit her there before returning to work, on the first rung of the long ladder back to his previous post.

  Ted had spent most of the day in his office, sorting paperwork. The trial in London was due to start the following week and he had promised to go down with Trev the day before it began. Trev would be one of the first prosecution witnesses scheduled to be called. They wouldn’t be st
aying in the family flat this time as, to Trev’s astonishment, his father was also being called as a witness for the prosecution, so he would be using his flat.

  The prosecution were anticipating the not guilty plea would go ahead and had warned Trev that the trial could, in that event, prove to be a lengthy affair. Now they had Sir Gethin on side, and were also calling him early, they remained optimistic of a slight chance the defendant’s legal team would advise him to change his plea to guilty and make a plea in mitigation.

  Ted had booked enough time off to allow for the trial running on. He’d told Trev, much to his delight, that if it should finish earlier than expected, they’d use the time to go and visit Ted’s mother, Annie, in Wales. Trev was still expressing concern about her, about something clearly bothering her, although she was always dismissive if either of them tried to press her on it.

  Ted’s door opened after the briefest of knocks and Jo came in, his expression puzzled.

  ‘Have you got a minute, Ted? Something a bit odd here on the Damson Drive case, so I’d like your opinion on it.’

  ‘Take a pew,’ he invited. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been keeping in touch with the husband, to make sure he knows what’s happening every step of the way, both with the case and the inquest arrangements. I couldn’t get hold of him today, so I phoned the brother, in Denton. He says he’s gone to stay with their sister for the time being, but he never mentioned anything about it to me when I spoke to him.’

  ‘Spur of the moment decision?’ Ted suggested. ‘Maybe he’s closer to the sister? Had a falling out with the brother? He should have let you know, of course, but I wouldn’t say it’s odd, exactly.’

  ‘Except that she lives in Australia.’

  ‘Australia? Do you not need some sort of visitor visa to go there?’

  ‘Not these days, apparently,’ Jo told him. You can fill in an Electronic Travel Authorisation online, get it within the hour, and you’re good to go for ninety days.’

  ‘So it could still be a spur of the moment thing, despite the distance involved.’

  ‘Why not mention it though? I’ve been speaking to him most days. Liaising with him so he has no cause at a future date to complain that he wasn’t kept informed of the progress on the case.

  ‘There’s more, too. The brother says his house is on the market. And he says their sister has been saying for ages what a wonderful country Australia is and how there are plenty of job opportunities for paramedics where she lives.’

  ‘Selling the house is understandable, though. He surely wouldn’t want to go back there to live, after what happened?’

  ‘In estate agent speak, it’s on at “an attractive price for a quick sale”. Ted, you don’t think Steve might possibly have been onto something, do you? That the husband somehow pulled this whole thing off in a way we can never prove, just to get away and start a new life Down Under?’

  ‘What about the daughter, though? Would he up sticks to move to another country and never visit her again?’

  ‘By all accounts she doesn’t know who anyone is, so she would hardly miss him. And her financial needs are all taken care of. He could have been planning this all along. He might even have applied for a visa, or whatever you need, to settle there and look for work.

  ‘If Steve was right the whole time and we didn’t take him seriously, it’s little wonder he did what he did.’

  Jo was the only one of the team members to whom Ted had divulged all the details of what Steve had done.

  ‘It’s worse, I’m afraid,’ Ted told him. ‘I checked Steve’s files before I did my report for the Super, to see if there was anything relevant there. Steve’s mother committed suicide. On the day of his Passing Out. He started self-harming because of it. As soon as he could, he put in for a transfer up to Manchester. His scars were noticed when he had another medical to change forces, but he seems to have convinced them that it was connected to losing his mother like he did, and especially because of the day it happened, and that it was now all in the past.

  ‘His father gets a brief mention on his file, but not as his next of kin, and he seems to have no contact with him. He’s a serving police officer. A Uniform sergeant.’

  Jo switched to Spanish to do the swearing, knowing that the boss didn't appreciate strong language.

  ‘Have we got this wrong on every single level, Ted? Have we let a guilty man fly off out of reach, and have we put Steve through hell because of it?’

  ‘We had no evidence, Jo,’ Ted told him. ‘You know that as well as I do. No forensics, nothing usable from the post-mortem. Only Steve’s hunch. And we can’t go off intuition alone, no matter how good it might be. There’s still the inquest, and an outside chance that the coroner and jury might not accept it as a simple murder-suicide. And still a slim possibility we may uncover something we haven’t turned up before, despite all our best efforts.

  ‘And ninety days, you say, for the travel document, if it’s the temporary one and he has to come back? Then let’s spend every spare minute we have before the inquest to see if there’s anything at all that’s been overlooked. Put Maurice onto it. You know he’s good at things like that, especially if he thinks it might help Steve. And if the husband doesn’t return for the inquest if he’s summonsed to appear, he could risk being in contempt of court for that, which doesn’t help his case.

  ‘It’s not over yet, Jo.’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Ted’s mobile phone rang as he and Trev stood waiting on the station platform for their train down to London for the trial.

  Trev frowned his disapproval as Ted reached automatically in his pocket to answer it.

  ‘Ted Darling, if that is work and you’re going to abandon me, this will end in divorce.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s not work. I better take it.

  The number was withheld so Ted simply replied with, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Don’t look now like the total bloody amateur you are, because you’ve clearly forgotten all of your training. You didn’t even know I was behind you. And to prove that I am, you should wear that shade of green more often. The colour suits you.’

  Ted felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle and a strange chill run through him. The proverbial goose walking over his grave. Except that on this occasion, the goose in question was Mr Green. And he definitely had eyes on him, as he said, because Ted was wearing his favourite sage green polo shirt.

  He knew Green had left Bizzie’s several days ago. She’d phoned him at work one morning to report that when she and Douglas had got up that day, the room Green had been using was empty, the bed stripped, the sheets in the washing machine and a brief but grateful note left for them on the breakfast table, which was laid ready for them.

  Ted assumed he would have headed straight back to his remote Scottish island, as soon as he was fit to travel. It seemed not.

  ‘Everything should be all right now. It’s all sorted. But only if you keep your dull wits about you and watch your back, for god’s sake.’

  If Ted had been surprised to hear from him, he was completely gobsmacked by Green’s next words.

  ‘Your Professor did a good job, and neither of them asked awkward questions. So I owe you, Gayboy. You got me out of a fix and I never forget a favour. Call me if ever you need me. But for god’s sake buck up and keep your eyes open.’

  Then he was gone.

  When Ted turned to look around him, there was no sign of the man anywhere.

  The courtroom was packed with press and public. Media cameras and microphones were being wielded on every square foot of space outside the precincts of the court, their operators jostling for position to get the best images and interviews.

  It was a high profile trial. A senior diplomat with a knighthood, often seen in public, facing numerous charges of grooming and sexual assault of young boys, mostly the sons of colleagues and even close friends. The red tops had been falling over themselves throughout the case to come up with ev
er more lurid headlines.

  Ted had seen Jono, the Met officer in charge of the case, when they’d first arrived and had exchanged a handshake and a few words with him. Jono was there to give his evidence early on but would then go back to work, although he would no doubt return for the verdict and sentence. He’d want to see a positive outcome for all the hard work he and his team had put into the case.

  Ted had been sitting in the public gallery throughout the trial. He’d given Trev a smile of encouragement when he’d taken his place on the witness stand. He was surprised when Trev opted for the oath rather than making an affirmation, as Ted himself always did when giving evidence. He thought Trev had left all trappings of his early Catholic upbringing behind him long since. Perhaps he was seeking some comfort from the familiarity of the words.

  Trev’s time spent with the other witnesses and advisors had paid off in spades. The factual content of what he said hadn’t changed from what he had always maintained. But his delivery was totally different. When Jono had visited their house, both he and Ted had been worried that Trev made it sound like a romantic affair when talking about it. Still illegal, but definitely leaving room for the defence to go to town on the question as to whether or not the defendant, Harvey Warboys, could have reasonably been expected to know that the boy he seduced was under the age of consent.

  Listening to Trev give his evidence now left little doubt. Ted could see that the jury members were following intently everything he said, one or two faces occasionally registering shock and revulsion at the breach of trust the words revealed.

  The defence didn’t have an easy job ahead of them. A character assassination of victims in abuse trials, apparently ones who were under age at the time of the alleged crimes, was always a risky strategy. The best they could try to do was to show that Trev was mistaken about dates and that he was, in fact, sixteen, the age of consent, at the time of his relationship with Warboys. Still morally wrong, in some eyes, given Warboys’ close friendship with Trev’s father, but not a criminal offence.