The Innocent Ones

by The Innocent Ones (retail) (epub)

  ‘Why won’t you tell me?’

  She slammed the glass down on the table. ‘Because there’s nothing to tell you. Don’t you understand? Do you really think if I wanted to see Nick Connor convicted of my son’s murder, I’d do it this way? I thought you were better than that. Clearly, I was mistaken. Please go now.’

  Dan wondered whether to stay and extract more from her, but the way she stared at the table and pursed her lips, he could tell that the conversation had ended.

  ‘As you wish,’ he said, and left the hotel.

  As he pulled away from the car park, he glanced towards the hotel window. Barbara was visible inside, still at her table. She was no longer still and silent though. She was talking on her phone, her face animated, her finger jabbing at the air as she spoke.

  Dan turned away. He’d been threatened and told to ignore whatever Barbara was dredging up. There was no way he was going to do that. His father was right. Don’t turn away from the fight.

  But he could do it without Barbara.

  * * *

  Jayne shivered.

  The seafront was cold and dark. During the day, it had seemed long and bright and open, the gleaming sea beyond. At night, it became more dangerous, the shelters just dark holes that housed threats, impossible to see inside. The only point of brightness was the moonbeam that trailed along a shifting black sea, illuminating the white spray as waves thumped onto the sand.

  It hadn’t been Jayne’s idea to meet there. She’d called Sean, William’s father, but he’d been somewhere noisy and didn’t want to be overheard. Mel had told him to expect a call, so he knew who she was. She’d thought about refusing, but he’d said he couldn’t meet her where he’d be seen because people talked about him. He just wanted to be left alone, and he didn’t want to spark any new rumours.

  She’d agreed, worried that it might be the only way, and then told herself that it was a good idea, that she’d only been there a few hours and was already making some progress.

  As the night turned dark and silent, she wondered about the wisdom of her decision.

  The lighthouse on the headland in the far distance swept a beam across the sea. There were some tiny lights from boats close to the horizon. She looked up and was struck by the blackness of the sky and the brightness of the stars. So many more of them than when at home, the city lights obliterating the beauty of the night sky. The Brampton skyscape seemed more unspoiled, a vast glittering display.

  There was a noise. The sound of movement, feet on concrete.

  She turned, expected to see him, but it was too dark to make anyone out. ‘Hello?’

  No answer.

  She peered harder into the shelters along the seafront, trying to see whoever was there. All she saw was an all-consuming blackness.

  She looked along both ways. A long dark strip, rising to the cliffs at one end, and the shimmering lights of the arcades at the other. Her hotel was that way. People were that way.

  Another noise. The sound of clothes rustling. A coat against a wall, but moving slowly, creeping up on her.

  Jayne pushed herself away from the railings, her eyes straining to see someone.

  ‘Sean?’

  No reply.

  She scrambled in her pocket for her phone and took a photo, hoping to see someone in the flash. The shelters were opened out by the light, but she didn’t have time to examine the picture. She dialled Sean’s number. His phone was switched off.

  It wasn’t safe. He’d invited her to trap her.

  She set off walking. A slow pace at first, her hands thrust into pockets, listening out, looking round, trying to work out from where the danger would come. It was too hard to hear though, over the slap of her pumps on the tarmac and the steady crash of the sea. Her breaths came quick. She glanced back. No one there, but most of it was in darkness. Anyone following her could track her from there.

  She quickened her pace, the lights from the arcades closer now, twinkling multi-colours promising slots and games and fun. A voice drifted through the night, a bingo caller.

  Another noise behind her. Someone stumbling, a shout.

  She ran, aiming for the streets, the lights, any place that would offer her protection.

  The seafront ended with a slope and she bolted for it, sprinting onto the pavement, a pedestrianised strip in front of the arcades.

  She doubled over and sucked in air, her hands shaking, sweat sticking her fringe to her forehead.

  It had been a mistake to meet him there. What would she have achieved?

  A man was watching her from the entrance to one of the arcades, in tight trousers and a short-sleeved shirt, keys hanging from his belt.

  ‘You all right, love?’ He drew on a cigarette.

  ‘Yes, fine, just scared myself in the dark.’

  He threw his cigarette to the floor and went back inside. She shook her head and straightened, tried to take some deep breaths. From her few hours there, she’d worked out that he fitted the town, that it seemed outwardly pleasant but there was a more sinister undercurrent.

  She’d had enough.

  She reached for her phone again and dialled Dan. As she listened to the ringtone, she set off past the arcade, heading into the town centre to make her way back towards her hotel. The streets were quiet.

  He answered on the third ring. ‘Hey, I thought you’d disappeared. How’s the seaside?’

  ‘Just finding my way around.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Pretty, in its own way, but cold and derelict too.’

  She glanced into a pub, wondering if a drink might make the night go better, but the seats were empty, the only person in there a barman staring outwards.

  ‘What have you found out?’

  ‘Mark was upsetting people. This true crime book of his? One of the chapters must have been about some child murderer, a guy called Rodney Walker who murdered two young children, a boy and a girl. Mark seemed to have got the idea that Rodney was innocent, which didn’t make him any friends, but if they were going to kill him because of that, they’d have done it here. Do you know how far this place is from anywhere? Miles of countryside and a whole bloody sea to dump a body in. No, they wouldn’t have gone to somewhere unfamiliar like Highford.’

  ‘If Mark was right, though, the real killer won’t be happy with him. Keep looking.’

  ‘Will do.’ A pause, and then, ‘What about you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This evening. What have you been doing?’

  ‘Are you all right? You don’t normally make idle chat like this. It sounds like you’re trying to keep me on the phone.’

  Jayne put the phone against her chest. She wanted to tell the truth, that the hotel was another ten minutes through town, past a taxi rank with cars standing idle and dark shopfronts, and she was scared. There weren’t any of the chains she saw in other town centres. Just local enterprises or shops selling things for a pound. Others were boarded up, as if the trading heart was slowly dying.

  But Dan was too far away to help her.

  ‘Just on my own in a strange place. Wanted to hear a friendly voice.’

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  ‘I am. Good night,’ and she clicked off.

  She sped up, unnerved by the quietness of the town, with little traffic and only the occasional gull for company. She was relieved to see her hotel, which surprised her, but in that moment, she craved the security of a locked door and a few hours to plan her next move.

  As she headed down the cobbled slope towards the harbour, she laughed to herself. Her imagination had got the better of her.

  The laugh choked in her throat as someone stepped in front of her. A man.

  Jayne didn’t have time to scream or shout or run. He grabbed her neck and pulled her towards the wall of the hotel, her feet kicking out as she was dragged out of sight of the reception area and the nearby street. He banged her head against the brickwork and tightened his hand around her throat.

  Sh
e couldn’t make him out, his face in shadow, but she could smell his booze and his anger. She tried to punch him, claw at him, but his arms were too long, so her efforts were just wild flails.

  With his free hand, he slapped her. ‘Leave town.’

  She winced and kicked out at him, catching him on his shin. He yelped and hit her again, harder this time, his fist clenched.

  The sounds went muffled as she was pushed against the wall, lights dancing in her vision. He pressed himself against her, his knee pushing between her legs, the brickwork digging into her scalp.

  ‘Stop struggling and listen.’ His voice was an angry hiss.

  Jayne kicked out again, but it was ineffective, so he pushed himself harder against her. Memories flooded back. Being pushed against a wall, someone between her legs. She could feel his arousal, but was that from her past or was it now?

  She lashed out with her fist. It caught him on his jaw, but it wasn’t strong enough to make him lose his grip.

  It enraged him.

  He let go of her neck and began to rain blows on her, hard punches knocking her head back against the wall. Everything blurred. The black of his clothes. Something silver. She lifted her arms to protect herself and his knee found her ribs, knocking the air out of her.

  She slid down the wall, gasping on the floor. She raised her hand in surrender, breathing hard, her ribs screaming pain, blood and sweat coating her lip. Her shirt was torn, the buttons popped, showing her bra, wet and dirty.

  He didn’t say anything, so she looked up.

  All that she saw was his fist travelling towards her. There was a moment of crashing pain as it thudded into the side of her face, and then it went black.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Porter was awake before his alarm sounded, lying back as he watched the curtains brighten.

  His sleep had been fitful, a memory jolting him in his sleep. For a few minutes he tried to reclaim it, wanting to know if it was something important that had always been buried in his subconscious, an answer in plain sight but ignored by him.

  Nothing came, but it cost him his sleep.

  It was how he’d been throughout his career and it had got worse once he’d retired. There weren’t many murders in Brampton, but he’d rarely felt a success whenever he locked someone up. For every win, there came a lost life, so he was just piggybacking misery.

  The ones where there’d been no resolution haunted him the most. The late-night reveller found in a pool of his own blood on the seafront one morning. The woman found stripped and strangled in a park. The pensioner found beaten on his living room floor, whatever valuables he had left plundered. He walked past the homes of their loved ones sometimes, consumed by memories of their distress as he sat, helpless, unable to find answers, offering merely unfulfilled promises that he would catch whoever did it.

  That was all he ever sought to do: provide answers. Give them a villain, a figure to hate. There was the cliché about needing closure, but it was true. They needed to know, because they needed to target their anger and sorrow somewhere.

  His mind went to her. Jayne Brett, she said she was called. First Mark Roberts. Now her. What would she uncover? He needed to know more. He could call in favours, find out more about her.

  Linda stirred, lifting her head, one eye open, bleary-eyed, her dark hair across her face. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Thinking, that’s all.’

  She flopped her head back onto the pillow. ‘It’s too early. What do you have to think about?’

  He didn’t respond. It was his own fault, because he’d never shared his job when he came home. The blood and the sadness stayed locked away in the police station. Or so he made out.

  He threw back the covers and made his way to the landing, stopping to collect some clothes, blinking as he turned on the light. ‘I’ll take Freddie out.’

  He closed the door and headed downstairs, the house coming alive to the sound of claws on a wooden hallway, excited pants at an earlier walk than normal.

  Once outside, he yawned and stretched. He needed the solitude of an early morning. The air was crisp and the sky blue.

  Freddie ran ahead as he made his way to the clifftop, his usual walk, and his mind drifted back more than twenty years, to the day when he’d brought in Rodney.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  1997

  Rodney’s eyes were wide with fear as he entered the custody area. Porter tried to contain his disgust, and only the presence of witnesses stopped him from digging his knuckles into his back and sending him sprawling into the custody desk.

  The custody suite was busy, which was unusual for Brampton, but it was as if every copper on duty had found a reason to be there. They all stared as Rodney approached the desk. The sergeant glared at him over his spectacles before reaching behind for a clipboard holding a paper custody record, still empty.

  As the sergeant filled out the forms, Rodney looked around, as if trying to get a fix on his new surroundings. It was the lack of windows that would strike him the most, Porter knew that. The cells were in the basement of the old police station, the custody desk at one end, the only light artificial, no way of knowing whether it was day or night. It played on people’s minds when they were locked up, so minutes stretched into hours and prisoners became more anxious to get out.

  Rodney’s voice was quiet as he answered the questions, nervous and timid. Porter clenched his fists into his pocket, desperate to smash Rodney’s face into the desk and scream at him about the dead children, whether they had met their fates timid and quiet, or whether they had cried for their mothers as they died.

  He stayed calm. The cries of the parents filled his thoughts. He’d hardly slept since the first murder. Everything about the case haunted him. The way people had talked about the parents, or the sight of the twisted young body, and the slur on Brampton. His town. He patrolled these streets. He’d grown up here and wanted to die here, and for over a month the town had been nothing but the centre of media talk.

  As Rodney moved away from the desk, the sergeant leading the way, a key in his hand, Porter leaned forward and whispered, ‘Enjoy the silence. It won’t be the same when you get to prison.’

  Rodney blinked, before he turned away and looked at the floor, right up until the moment the sergeant opened the cell door and stood to one side so that Rodney could shuffle in.

  Porter was annoyed with himself. He should have been more professional, but he was still a human being, with emotions. He didn’t want to lose that and turn into a form-filling robot. No, his emotions drove him, even though he never displayed them. His fingernails dug into his palms as he clenched his fist.

  As the sergeant slammed the cell door, making the heavy metallic clang echo along the corridor, he said, ‘Is he the man then, or is this some game, hoping he’s got information?’

  ‘He’s the man. I know it. Any innocent would be protesting. Not him. He came along like a condemned man.’

  The sergeant scowled. ‘I was tempted to let him keep his belt, just so he could do us all a favour and make his own lights go out.’

  Porter shook his head. ‘Let him suffer for every one of the days he has left. The fear will kill him more slowly, and I want it to be slow.’

  The sergeant headed back along the corridor, jangling his keys.

  Porter dropped the hatch so that he could peer into the cell.

  It was a small square with walls painted grey, a light concealed into the ceiling and a steel toilet in one corner.

  The toilet will break him, Porter thought. The stink from it, years of piss and shit and vomit, splashed and then bleached away, will get into every pore, take days to wash away, so he’ll get more desperate not to be locked up.

  Rodney was sitting on a plastic mattress, his head down, his body slumped. Defeated.

  Porter closed the hatch, pleased with what he saw, before he was distracted by a noise by the custody desk. The arrival of a lawyer. He could tell from the booming voice and the ra
sp of heavy breathing.

  Ken Goodman. A small-town lawyer who dealt in all areas of law. He sorted out house sales and divorces and sued the council when people tripped over loose paving stones. He was all the lawyer anyone needed. Or, at least, so he thought.

  Ken Goodman was a copper’s lawyer. He leaked secrets and made friends with everyone, playing the part of the colourful leader of the community, known by all, liked by most. For Ken, being a lawyer in Brampton was about keeping the town happy. Those who’d done wrong said sorry, and those who’d been wronged were never slighted.

  If Porter ever needed a lawyer, Ken Goodman would be the last one he’d choose. He was too cosy with the local coppers, enjoying the golf club and the lunches, taking out other inspectors and higher, sorting out tickets for football matches, all in the name of ‘corporate hospitality’. The hospitality was visible in the movement of his stomach, rotund and flabby and always seeming to swing the opposite way to the rest of his torso.

  Porter was relieved to see him though. Whenever one of the bigger city firms came along, which wasn’t often, they advised silence and didn’t make any effort to see the police side.

  ‘Mr Goodman, so good to see you,’ Porter said, as he went back into the open area near the custody desk.

  Ken turned and grinned. ‘Chief Inspector Porter, I’m charmed.’ He mopped his brow and then his unshaven jowls with a red handkerchief he pulled from his pocket, leaving small bits of red fluff on his cheeks, snagged by the stubble. ‘Is this going to be all night?’

  ‘Have you been told it’s a murder? The two children killed in the last month.’

  Ken’s face lost some of its brightness. ‘Yes, so I understand.’ He took a deep breath, his heavy frame shifting, bulging over his trousers and forcing them down his hips. ‘Show me to him, let’s see what he has to say.’

  The sergeant led him along the corridor, the long-trodden route, and let Ken into the cell, Porter just behind him.

  There’d been talk of a new police station, with proper facilities, so they could stop lawyers using the cells as interview rooms, sitting next to their clients on the plastic mattress and relying on a red buzzer and the speed of a custody sergeant to rescue them if the client ever became aggressive.