The Innocent Ones

by The Innocent Ones (retail) (epub)

  She’d got a job in a bar when she’d first arrived but got bored with the drunken leers and the arrogance of those in suits, who either thought she was beneath them or wanted her to be beneath them. To them, she’d been nothing more than tits in a T-shirt or an arse in jeans. Instead, she’d opted for the steady routine of the supermarket, either working on the tills or stacking the shelves. The bills had to be paid somehow.

  She put her chin in her hands. It looked like rain again, the Manchester curse. It wasn’t the heady experience she’d been hoping for. She was too close to those who scraped by every day by cheating and stealing, haunted faces loitering in the shadows. Taxis and vans rumbled outside at night, keeping her awake, and glances through the curtains showed young women servicing the drivers, bobbing heads or hands working fast. She’d thought the quiet side street would mean peace. In the city, it meant somewhere for people to do things they’d rather not be caught doing.

  She thought back to the few years she’d spent in Highford, living on her own in a small apartment at the top of a crumbling building, surrounded by drinkers and drug users. It hadn’t been so different, just a less dangerous version, even if the passing of time had turned the memories into good ones.

  But it had been a hiding place, not a home, because she’d moved to Highford to get away from her past, when she’d been accused of murder. Her boyfriend died from a stab wound that severed his femoral artery, and Jayne had been holding the knife. It had been the final argument, one more piece of abuse that she could no longer tolerate.

  It had all ended when he’d pinned her against the wall, his anger spewing spittle into her face, his teeth bared, his knee pushing her legs apart, his hands grabbing at her.

  The knife had been nearby. Or had it been in her hand all along? She’d imagined it as panic, some desperate lashing out, no intention behind it, until he was bleeding out on the kitchen floor. All Jayne could do was wrap her arms around her head and try to block out the sound of her own screams.

  But as time had gone on, she’d started to question that memory. Had it really happened in a blind panic? Or had she lost her temper and grabbed the knife intending to punish him, her own piece of sweet revenge?

  It was how she’d met Dan Grant: she’d been a weeping wreck at a police station, and he was the tall dark stranger there to help. Her lawyer, and then her friend. Dan secured her acquittal and persuaded her to move to Highford, to get away from her boyfriend’s family, who were lashing out with threats she took seriously. He gave her a change of name and a new career as an investigator, where she worked on his cases, a freelancer, doing whatever Dan needed doing to help him win his cases. She was the one who knocked on the worst doors in town as he did the fancy stuff in the courtroom.

  For a while, it had been good, but the work became too sporadic and the threats from Jimmy’s family turned out to be words spoken in grief. She left Highford, wanting to start a new life rather than hiding away.

  It wasn’t just about the work though. There was something unfulfilled there too. Desire, lust, or even a deeper feeling than that, and she’d kidded herself that he felt it too. But she couldn’t allow herself to be dependent on a man again, because she’d killed the last man she loved.

  Thinking of Dan brought down her mood. He was a memory of the dark times, even though they were never far away. The images rushed her at night, keeping her awake.

  She’d tried living at home, but she’d been away for too long and acquired her own habits. There’d been too many arguments after she’d rolled in drunk, sometimes found slumped over the kitchen table, or having to sneak a man she hardly knew out of the house, worried that her parents had heard her.

  Here she was then, the big city, the first part of the rest of her life.

  She stepped away from the window and reached for her bag. It was time for another day of scanning other peoples’ shopping.

  Chapter Three

  Dan pointed to the entrance doors as he passed the woman who’d been watching him in court. ‘Let’s talk outside.’

  She followed his gesture. ‘What’s wrong with in here? Isn’t there a small room we can go to?’

  He shook his head. ‘You’ve come looking for me. I don’t know who you are, but I can tell you’re not the usual kind of person who comes to a Magistrates’ Court. That makes me wary, and when I’m wary I want to be where other people can see me.’

  ‘If you insist,’ she said, and marched ahead, bristling.

  The security gate beeped as she went through and headed down steps to the brightness of the street outside. The security guard glanced up from his phone and raised an eyebrow as Dan followed.

  She waited for him outside, her arms folded. Dan walked past and made to a bench opposite the court entrance, in a small square between the courthouse and the town library, planters alongside filled with pansies and tulips, the colour breaking up the dark grey stone. She followed.

  He sat down and held out his hands. ‘I’m all yours.’

  The woman sat further along, one leg crossed over the other, turned away from Dan. ‘My name is Barbara Roberts, and you represent Nick Connor, the man accused of killing my son.’

  He almost groaned.

  Mark Roberts was found bludgeoned to death in a park three months earlier. The investigation had led to Nick Connor, a regular client of Dan’s, and his trial was just a few days away.

  It was one of the perils of being a defence lawyer, because every conflict has two sides, and there were times when he became the brunt of the other side’s anger.

  Dan stood and turned to her, his voice lowered. ‘I’m really sorry for your loss, Mrs Roberts, but I shouldn’t be talking to you.’

  ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘What am I thinking?’

  ‘That I’m here to cause trouble. I’m not, believe me. I’m here for your help. Or it might be that I’m helping you.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Sit down, Mr Grant, please.’ Her voice had softened, although Dan detected a quiet determination there. ‘It will help your client, and isn’t that what you are here for, to look out for him, to speak up for him?’

  Dan thought about leaving, but there was something about her expression that told him it was more than a complaint about how he was representing her son’s alleged killer. And his curiosity was piqued.

  He sat down. ‘Make it quick.’

  She uncrossed her leg and leaned in to Dan. ‘I don’t think Nick Connor killed my son, and I want to help you to find out who did.’

  Dan’s eyes widened. ‘Wow. That’s quite an opening.’

  ‘I thought you’d be interested.’

  Dan held out his hand. ‘You can say what you’ve come here to say, but I might choose not to tell you anything. Are you all right with that?’

  ‘It’s more than I have.’

  He took his Dictaphone from his inside pocket, always with him so that he could catch up on work between cases. ‘I’m going to record this, too. I don’t want anything said here to be misconstrued.’

  ‘I’m not here to lay traps, Mr Grant.’

  ‘My client is accused of killing your son. You can’t blame me for being wary.’

  ‘Do you know what I want out of this case?’

  ‘Justice for your son?’

  ‘Exactly, and that means making sure that his murderer spends the rest of his life behind bars.’ Barbara paused for a moment as her eyes moistened, swallowing to take away the tears. ‘Does Nick Connor admit killing my son?’

  ‘He’s pleaded not guilty.’

  ‘Don’t take me for a fool, Mr Grant. I’ve an idea how the law works, and pleading not guilty doesn’t mean much, because there are the legal games to play.’

  ‘I’m just doing my job; but no, he hasn’t, I can tell you that much.’

  ‘If it isn’t Nick then, you’ll be wanting my help as much as I want yours. Unless you think he is the murderer, that is.’

  ‘Mrs Roberts,
what I think doesn’t matter, but I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  Barbara wiped her eyes before continuing ‘I’ve told you. I don’t believe Nick Connor killed my son, and I want to prove who did. I’m guessing you’d be interested if I could prove that.’

  ‘Okay, if it wasn’t Nick, who do you think killed him?’

  ‘I don’t know, but what I do know is that Mark was in Highford for a reason, and it’s connected to his murder, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Did he tell you why he was here?’

  ‘No. My son was a writer, a journalist. He got by on court reporting mostly, but sometimes he’d write a feature that ended up in the nationals. He wanted to write a book too, a true crime one, and that might be why he was here. He was always very secretive about whatever he worked on, but there is one thing strange about this case. There was something in Highford that had attracted his attention, but, if he was here to do research, where’s his laptop?’

  Dan frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The case is that he was mugged in that park, a robbery gone wrong. Wrong place, wrong time. The police told me that much. But if that’s true, why has someone taken his laptop, because there was no laptop in the place he was staying, nor any papers? He wouldn’t have carried it around with him, not to where he was killed.’

  ‘He might have been mugged for it. You can’t know everything about him.’

  ‘His papers and his keys too? He’d rented a cottage just outside of town. I’ve spoken to the owner, and he told me that someone had been in and removed things. No one knows what was taken, but there will have been papers. And why would a mugger take keys?’ She wagged her finger. ‘This was no robbery gone wrong, Mr Grant. Nick Connor did not kill Mark, I’m sure of it.’

  Dan sat back, his eyes narrowed.

  ‘Find out who took his laptop and his papers and that’s your killer,’ she said.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘What do you know about my son?’

  Dan flinched. It was a sudden jab of truth, that he didn’t know much. He thought back to the file and realised that Mark had been just a figure described by the police, as if he had been always lifeless, just a name attached to some post-mortem photographs.

  ‘Not much, I’m sorry.’

  ‘He’s just the victim, right? He doesn’t matter in your world.’

  ‘That isn’t how it is.’

  ‘You sure?’ She waved her hand. ‘I’m not stupid, it makes it easier to do your job, but if you want me to help you, you’ve got to know about my son.’

  ‘Won’t it be my choice whether I allow you to help? This is, well,’ and he shrugged, ‘unconventional.’

  ‘If Nick Connor had nothing to do with Mark’s murder, don’t we both want the same thing, for Nick Connor to be out of prison? If I can provide the crucial information, you’d be negligent if you dismissed me.’

  ‘That’s not quite how it works. I need to speak to Nick first, but I’ve got to hand it to you, Mrs Roberts, you’ve got me interested. Tell me your story, and your son’s, and we’ll take it from there.’

  ‘Mark grew up in North London, out towards Pinner. It’s a nice part of the city, I know that. Safe, suburban, but Mark was attracted to the dark side of the city. Not that he was a bad boy, but he loved the old gangster tales. Even cockneyed-up his accent, if you know what I mean. He was always good at writing and wanted to do something with it, like a writer or journalist, but he was finding it hard, because newspapers aren’t what they were.’

  ‘The world changes.’

  ‘It does, and he was naive, thought that the world was just waiting to hear from him, but it turned out that there were so many other people who thought the same thing. He’d tried everything. Hanging around the courts, always an ear out for the good stories, but the papers don’t pay what they used to, because everyone wants to read for free on the Internet. He tried starting a novel, I know that because he showed me a couple of chapters, but he gave up because he knew he was writing it for the wrong reason.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘He wanted to earn a living, not because he wanted to tell a story. It felt stilted somehow, because to make people love it, you’ve got to love it too. That’s what I told him, so I talked him into giving up.’ Before Dan could respond, she waved her finger. ‘You’re thinking I should have encouraged him, not put him off, live his dreams, but I didn’t want him to waste his life. He could write stories when he was older, when he had more things to say. His needs were more immediate. His rent was high, but he was too proud to move home, because it would be like failing.’

  Barbara paused as her eyes filled with tears. ‘Worrying about silly things like that seems so unimportant now. If I could go back, I’d do it all differently, but we didn’t know what was going to happen. He needed to earn money, so he hit upon this idea of a true crime book, looking at old crimes.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s where he was secretive, because he said he was going to write something different, something shocking, and he didn’t want anyone to know, almost as if he thought someone would steal his idea.’

  ‘And this idea brought him to Highford?’

  She smiled, the first one since she and Dan had begun talking. ‘I don’t think people come to this kind of town unless there’s a good reason.’

  ‘What exactly are you proposing, Mrs Roberts?’

  ‘We find out why he was here. He must have written things down, done some research. His laptop has gone. I’ve been to his apartment in London and there’s nothing there either. That doesn’t make any sense. He’d been working on this book for a few months. There’d be files of things, because he was always so neat. His phone was gone too. It’s almost as if someone was cleaning up. This is more than a mugging, Mr Grant, and we can prove this. We can find out who really killed my son. Who’d deny a mother that?’

  ‘There’s a lot of we in this. It makes me wary.’

  Barbara looked offended. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘How do I know you’re not trying to interfere, to find things out and somehow make it worse for Nick?’

  ‘You don’t, Mr Grant, but you’d be a fool to ignore me.’

  ‘Have you been to the police with this?’

  ‘Of course, but they just patted me on the hand and told me they had the right man.’

  ‘Did Mark give any kind of hint about what he was doing?’

  ‘None at all, but I know where else he’d been. A small town called Brampton, a seaside place in Yorkshire. He spent a couple of weeks there, not long before he died.’

  ‘Would he have any other reason to be there? A girlfriend? A job?’

  ‘Mark didn’t have a girlfriend, and I don’t mean to be harsh, but he wasn’t the moving north type. He was a Londoner and wanted to stay that way.’

  ‘I’ll need to speak to Nick before I do anything. How can I get in touch with you?’

  She opened a bag until she could find a pen and piece of paper. She scribbled a number on an old receipt. ‘I’m staying at The Oaks, on the way out of Highford.’

  ‘I know it.’ He lifted the piece of paper. ‘Thank you. I’ll get in touch tomorrow, once I’ve spoken to Nick.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Grant.’

  As she got up to go, Dan said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs Roberts, I really am. I do what I do because someone has to, but that doesn’t make me any less human.’

  ‘I know. I can see it in your eyes. You’re a good man.’

  Dan watched her go and wondered what the hell he was about to get into. As she disappeared from view, walking briskly, he realised something else: he’d need some help.

  He knew just the person.

  Chapter Four

  Easter 1997

  Andrew Porter steamed up the passenger window of the police Transit as he looked towards the crowd on the clifftop.

  The mood was changing. The atmosphere had a little more cra
ckle than before, the laughs and shouts more raucous.

  He wasn’t surprised, it always did around this time, but he’d hoped this year might be different. The country was filled with optimism, or at least that’s how the papers were pitching it. Tony Blair was challenging the Tory old guard to become prime minister, everyone sick of back-to-basics morality spewed out by politicians living immoral lives. Even the royals were looking like their worst days were behind them; the papers once too full of transcripts of private phone calls, Prince Charles wanting to be Camilla’s tampon, their reputations trashed, but now Diana’s divorce was finalised and everyone was hoping that she’d find love again soon.

  Yes, the year was a good year, and Porter reckoned the good times would see the crowd behave.

  Easter Monday in Brampton was a tradition going back decades, some thought centuries. Fires burned along the clifftops, sparking rumours that it was an old Viking festival, reminiscent of old Nordic burials. Others speculated that it was a hangover from the Armada, when beacons would be lit along the English coastline, providing advance warnings of an attack by sea. Whatever the origins, Porter doubted those theories. Go back two hundred years and Brampton was nothing more than a cluster of cottages around a fishing harbour, and it was only with the advent of Victorian tourism that it had grown into a town big enough to merit an annual festival.

  Whatever its origins, it hadn’t taken long for it to turn into a booze-up and a focal point for the drunks and troublemakers. At least it was early this year, the last day of March, so the cool weather kept many people indoors.

  The day had started innocently enough, with a skipping race along the seafront, followed by a fairground on the far tip of the headland, by the pristine white lighthouse, where the noises from the generators bounced between the small coves. As dusk settled in, bonfires were lit along the headland, revellers walked along the clifftops and back towards the town, with villagers offering sweets for the children in each small cove and inlet. The lighthouse sent a beam sweeping across the bay. Four sweeps and then a pause, and then another four, and on it went.