The Innocent Ones

by The Innocent Ones (retail) (epub)

  Jayne went to a round table by a window, with a view towards the farm further down. Was this where Mark had planned out his book, his laptop there, before he set out for his fatal meeting?

  She became aware of the owner behind her. She turned. ‘Did you meet Mark?’

  ‘Just when he came to collect the keys.’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘Pleasant enough, but I was only showing him around. Made all the right noises, like he understood how to use the dishwasher and not to light a fire if he was going out. If he hadn’t been murdered, I don’t think I’d have remembered him.’

  ‘Did he say why he was visiting Highford?’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t remember if he did or not, and I don’t ask. Some people come to walk the hills. Others because they have family nearby but don’t want to stay with them. If they don’t want to tell me, that’s fine too. As long as they pay the rent and look after the place, they can do what they want.’

  ‘Did he leave anything behind?’

  ‘What, like his clothes?’

  ‘Anything really.’

  He thought back. ‘The police looked through his stuff but told me there was nothing there of any use. Just his clothes and toiletries.’

  ‘What about a laptop? He was a journalist, and I bet this was his desk.’

  ‘If they took one, they didn’t tell me, and I don’t remember one.’

  ‘What happened to his stuff?’

  ‘A woman came for it. An older woman. His mother, she said, but that was after the police had been here.’

  Jayne thanked him and was about to leave when she thought of something. ‘When I called you before, and mentioned his name, what came to mind?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Memories rely on triggers, like the way a song can take you back to a specific time. What image popped into your head when I mentioned his name?’

  He thought about that. ‘A tall man. Green coat and scarf. A holdall and a bag over his shoulder, just coming in through the door. It was his accent. Southern, in some way, although I couldn’t say where.’

  ‘The bag on his shoulder. A slim one?’

  ‘Like a laptop bag? You mentioned a laptop before.’ He frowned. ‘Yes, just like one. I remember him clunking it onto the table as he came in.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jayne said. ‘That’s really helpful.’

  Just as she was about to leave, he said, ‘I was sad to hear about him. It felt weird, seeing his stuff here, and a young bloke, too. A shame.’

  She looked back around the room, once more seeing the view he’d enjoyed as he researched his book, no idea what was awaiting him. An image of Jimmy flashed into her mind, him laughing, the times they’d spent before she killed him, those moments where he was the man she’d believed him to be when they first started out. So young, so full of promise.

  She’d brought that to an end, all right.

  ‘Yeah, a young death is the hardest,’ she said, and closed the door behind her as she went back to her car.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dan was in court but he wasn’t paying attention to his client, his mind on the phone number handed over by Barbara. Andrew Porter from Brampton. He needed to call him, but he couldn’t with his client on his shoulder, telling him how badly the case would affect him. Dan wasn’t interested in listening to him, but that wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

  His client was a respectable middle-aged man who enjoyed gardening in the nude. Most often, it was confined to his back garden, but on a sunny day at the end of the previous summer he’d pruned his bushes that bordered the pavement outside his house. An old lady across the road had taken exception, as had the young mother returning to her home with her children.

  Dan put his hand out. ‘Look, I’ve told you to calm down. You won’t help yourself if you go in there agitated. Yes, the law matters, and it’s on your side, but sometimes it can be just about the magistrates liking you.’

  ‘They’ve accused me of a sex crime, Mr Grant, like I’m a pervert. How can it be perverted to be seen as the good Lord intended?’

  ‘And that’s what we’re saying, don’t worry. The prosecution has picked the wrong charge: exposure. The law is our friend. Don’t make the magistrates your enemy.’

  ‘I would never expose myself in that way, like some cheap flasher. It was a warm day, and I enjoy being natural. Where’s the harm?’

  ‘No offence, but some people don’t want to see all you’ve got. Let me speak to the prosecutor.’

  The courtroom was quiet, the prosecutor was at the front, Pam Smith again, scrolling through the contents of her laptop. She was the only person in the courtroom and controlled the local Magistrates’ Court like her own personal fiefdom.

  ‘Morning, Pam. You ready for the fight?’

  She looked round and smiled. ‘Hi, Dan. It should be fun. What’s he like though? Will he make my mouth water as I imagine him all naked, his body glistening in the sun?’

  Dan grimaced. ‘Put it this way, he’ll never make a calendar.’

  ‘Shame.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re running it though? How can you prove he intended to cause distress?’

  ‘He did a shimmy with his hips when he saw the neighbours were watching.’

  Dan grinned. ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it.’

  ‘Some things are best kept bagged up.’ She sighed. ‘It’s going to run. If he’s acquitted, that’s just how it goes. Do you know what test I apply?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Would I rather be the prosecuting lawyer or the defence lawyer? Today, it’s the prosecutor.’

  Dan looked back towards the door. Through the glass panel, he could see his client glaring at him. ‘I could do without this. He paid me yesterday, even though I’ve been telling him since his case started that I don’t work for free, which means I’ve done no preparation.’

  ‘Ah, the satisfaction curve.’

  ‘That’s the one. If I lose the case, he won’t pay me a bean. Get the money up front, it’s the only way.’

  ‘You might just keep him satisfied. If I’m going to lose it, just make me laugh along the way. Sometimes, that’s the only joy.’

  Dan agreed and then stared to the front, his mind drifting back to Nick’s case. The phone number Barbara dropped off was tucked into his wallet. He could make the call before the case started.

  ‘Give me a moment,’ he said and went to the back of the courtroom. He rummaged for the scrap of paper and dialled the number. A man answered.

  ‘Andrew Porter?’

  ‘Who’s speaking please?’

  ‘My name is Dan Grant. I’m a lawyer representing Nick Connor and—’

  ‘Hang on, let me stop you right there. Has that crazy woman put you on to me?’

  ‘Barbara Roberts?’

  ‘That’s her.’

  ‘She gave me your number.’ Dan could sense his hesitancy, so he lowered his voice to sound conspiratorial, ‘I know what you mean about crazy though. Whatever grief she gave you, she’s bugging me now. My client is accused of killing her son. What the hell does she expect me to do? Just help me out here, so I can get rid of her.’

  Porter went silent for a few seconds, and then said, ‘She’s got herself fixated that her son’s death had something to do with an old murder case of mine. That’s why her son was here, bugging me about it, some book he was working on. I’m sorry he’s been killed, but he was chasing dead ends.’

  ‘What was the case?’ Before Porter could say anything, he added, ‘I can ask her, so I’ll find out.’

  ‘You ask her then, because I’m not taking part in this.’ And then he hung up.

  Dan was staring at his phone, intrigued, when there was a noise at the front of the courtroom. As he looked up, the magistrates were walking in, all suits and earrings.

  As Dan made his way to the front, bowing his greeting, he thought back on the conversation. Curiosity began to tickle him. Barbara might be righ
t, because whatever her son had been excited by, no one had been able to discover what it was.

  Dan remembered the old police maxim in a murder case: you should always start with the victim. Jayne might just have got herself that trip to the seaside.

  First, they had a prisoner to visit.

  Chapter Fifteen

  1997

  Porter stared through his windscreen, the sick feeling in his stomach telling him the answer even before he got out of his car.

  It had been nine days since Ruby had gone missing, and now he was staring at a crime scene. A white tent and scenes of crime officers in forensic suits, in stark contrast to the dark shadows of the woodlands. He prayed that it wasn’t Ruby, just so he could cling on to the hope that she could still be found, but he knew that hope dwindled with every passing day.

  They’d got the call from a shopkeeper, panicked by what she was being told by some travellers who’d lived along a narrow country lane ever since the New-Age thing had been popular ten years before. The travellers didn’t have access to a phone, so they’d sent one of them on a horse, no saddle, part of their dream of Olde England, and stopped outside the first shop he’d come to. He was shaking, and as soon as he’d told the shopkeeper why he was there, the police had been called.

  The call resulted in a police turnout around six miles from Brampton, along a lane that disappeared into woodland, so that the tarmac eventually became a rutted track and then nothing. The travellers had been tolerated by the nearest village, with some regarding them as a local oddity, taking them food and sometimes staying to enjoy wine around the fire. They were on public land, living in old wooden caravans in a copse by the lane, and got by on growing their own food and keeping chickens, sometimes venturing into town to load up on sacks of stale bread, donated by the local bakers, and cans of food, always smelling of woodsmoke.

  They were left alone. They’d opted out and bothered no one.

  Above all else, Porter couldn’t remember them at either the Easter festival on the clifftop or the May Day fair at the rugby club. They weren’t suspects. If his fears turned out to be correct, he guessed that it was the remote location that had been the attraction. Not far from the town, so the killer avoided the risk of an accident or being away for too long, but quiet enough so they wouldn’t be disturbed. Most people avoided the area because of the travellers, which meant that whatever people did here, they could do it without being seen.

  Porter got out of his car and wandered towards the scene. Police cars clogged the lane until fluttering yellow crime scene tape stopped them progressing any further. Another police car nearer to Brampton was blocking the road, to keep away the ghoulish and curious, but the travellers had refused to move. The police could have insisted, but Porter thought it was worth losing the argument because he wanted to keep their co-operation, and anyway, anything of forensic value from their camp would have been trampled into the ground a long time before.

  The travellers were sitting on the steps of their caravans, the women in leggings and long jumpers, the men with dreadlocks and beads twirled into their beards.

  As Porter walked over to them, the children were shooed into one of the caravans. The man closest to him stood up as he got near.

  ‘Don’t mind them,’ he said, although there was some hostility in his tone. ‘Before we settled here, it was the men in uniforms who smashed our windows and beat us, and we’ve told them the stories.’

  Porter held up his hand. ‘Not around here. Don’t judge us all by the actions of the few.’

  The man thought about that for a few seconds and then his tone softened. ‘No, I’ll give you that. This town has been good to us.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Astral.’

  Porter doubted it was his real name, but he shook anyway. He tried not to think of the dirt and whatever else was embedded in Astral’s palm. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘About a week ago, we heard a car. Nothing strange about that, but usually they keep on going. Some people come here to abuse us, they slow down and shout, sometimes throw stuff, but they never stop. There’s a turning just down there that takes you back to the main road. The ones who go straight past and don’t bother us are heading for where the lane gets really dark, down by those trees. There’s nothing down there, so it’s good for people who want to, you know, have some fun in cars.’

  ‘Does that happen much?’

  ‘At weekends, sometimes. Provided they don’t bother us, we don’t bother them. Free living, that’s what we’re into.’

  ‘You told the shopkeeper about a car that stood out. Why do you remember it?’

  ‘Because someone got out. Normally, they stay in the car and just get it rocking, if you know what I mean. This guy was different, but it didn’t mean that much at the time, not enough to report it, but it stuck in my mind. This person was on his own. That’s why it was different.’

  ‘A man?’

  ‘Definitely. He was doing something suspicious, but we thought, what’s it got to do with us? People don’t bother us and we won’t bother them, but then, well, what we found…’ He paused to compose himself, before letting out a long breath. ‘We were building a new latrine. We alternate. Dig ditches and use them and move on, so it all gets made natural again. We moved into the field over there and, as we were about to dig, we saw where someone else had been digging. I remembered the man from before, so we dug there, curious.’ He stopped again, and tears jumped into his eyes. His voice cracked when he said, ‘We came across a leg first. A small one. A child. That’s when we stopped and I rode into town.’

  Porter put his hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Thank you.’

  The man swallowed and looked down. He made small circles in the mud with a gnarled old branch that had been hand-carved into a large cane. ‘Is it the girl? The one who went missing? We hear things on the radio.’

  Porter looked towards the forensic tent. ‘I don’t know. I hope not, because I want to find her alive, but if it’s not her…’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know if it makes it better or worse, because it’s still a dead child.’

  ‘It’s got to you, this, I can hear it in your voice.’

  ‘It’s kids, Astral. Brampton should be safe for them. It isn’t any longer.’

  They both watched the forensic activity for a while, Porter clean-shaven and in a suit, navy and double-breasted, with a white shirt; Astral next to him, grubby and in clothes that were faded and ragged, his hair matted.

  Porter turned to him. ‘What kind of car was it?’

  Astral thought back as he rested his chin on his cane. ‘Bright white, that’s what I remember. I don’t know what kind, I don’t keep up on car models, but it looked new.’

  ‘What size though? Big, small? Hatchback or estate? A jeep?’

  ‘Medium size, but not a hatchback. Just like a normal-sized car with a boot. And the badge on the back was oval and blue. I remember that much.’

  ‘A Ford?’

  Astral considered that and said, ‘Yeah, a Ford.’

  Porter looked along the line of police cars, some unmarked, and set off walking. ‘Follow me.’

  Astral’s footsteps were heavy, his boots large and with a thick tread.

  As Porter got halfway along the line, he said, ‘Like this, but in white?’

  Astral stared at the car for a few seconds before he said, ‘Yeah, that’s it, man. The logo is right, and it was that kind of shape. All modern and sloped.’

  Porter made a mental note. A white Ford Mondeo. ‘And where did it stop?’

  Astral pointed ahead. ‘See where there’s a gap in the trees? Just there.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘We don’t go by time. We go by the sun and the stars. The children were in bed, I remember that, and it was a good night, a clear sky. I was having a drink and a smoke when it came along.’

  Porter smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  He went as if to walk towards the crime scene tape for an update when Astral grabbed his sleeve. ‘If it
’s her, the little girl, tell her parents I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? Why?’

  ‘I could have stopped him. She might have still been alive. Even if she was dead then, their torture would have been over.’

  ‘It’s not over. Just a different kind of torture.’

  Astral nodded. ‘Yeah, I get that. Thanks, man.’

  As Astral went back to his family, one of the officers by the tape came towards Porter.

  He knew what he was about to be told by the urgency in his eyes. ‘Go on, say it.’

  ‘It’s a little girl, sir, about the right age.’

  ‘Is she wearing clothes?’

  ‘A pink Spice Girls T-shirt.’

  Porter closed his eyes and let out a long breath. It was her. Ruby.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Present Day

  Jayne sat with her arms folded, staring ahead, trying not to think too hard about where she was. Langford Prison, where Nick Connor was being held on remand.

  The memories of her own time on remand flooded back though, however much she tried to keep them away.

  The first court appearance had been the worst thing. In the police station, it had been part of a process, questions and answers, a rest in her cell, food, but she knew it would end, that the process would move on and she’d move with it. The court appearance had made it seem more final.

  It was the powerlessness of it all.

  She’d been brought into the glass-lined dock from the cell corridor underneath, so that she blinked hard at the harsh courtroom lights, like a specimen in a jar. Jimmy’s family had been waiting for her, glaring from the public gallery. Her parents had been there too, sitting further away, but they shared her shock and fear. She’d been shaking so much she could hardly give her name and, as she stared forward, her focus had been on Dan, who’d turned to her and smiled, the only person in the room who showed her any warmth.

  From there, it was a ride in the secure van to the prison, her first night spent in disbelief, hardly able to understand how she’d ended up there. Just a few days earlier, it had been just another day, and then it had been prison.