Harte

by Robert Innes

  Blake narrowed his eyes and folded his arms, looking at Hawthorne in deep suspicion. “What exactly is the procedure for moving a prisoner? What exactly happens between him leaving his cell and being placed in the van?”

  “He would have been accompanied from his cell, handcuffed of course, to the doors where the van would have been waiting for him. If you saw the first television report this morning then you will have seen that bit yourselves.”

  “If that is what we saw. And would it have been the same officers that put him in the back of the van?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “Can you take us down there, please?”

  Hawthorne’s eyebrows raised. “Down where?”

  “To where he was loaded into the van,” Blake replied. He had quickly decided that he was going to get very little of use from the man in front of him.

  “Oh,” Hawthorne said, looking surprised. “Alright, if you insist.” He stood up and walked across the office. “Please follow me.”

  They followed Hawthorne along the draughty corridors. All the while, the prison manager walked in front of them just far ahead enough for Blake to be able to whisper to Sally.

  “There’s something weird going on here.”

  “You don’t need to tell me,” muttered Sally. “He’s hiding something. Why though?”

  “I have no idea,” Blake replied quietly. “How can the head warden of one of the highest security prisons in the UK have no idea what went on this morning?”

  “Is everything alright?” Hawthorne remarked, swiftly spinning around to face them.

  “Much further is it?” Blake asked.

  Hawthorne frowned. “No.”

  He pulled out a large set of keys and proceeded to unlock each large door as they came to it. Blake counted no less than six doors that were unlocked and then relocked behind them before they finally made their way towards the final large steel doors leading outside.

  Blake stepped outside and looked around. There were various prison vans of different sizes scattered around the yard, including one that looked more or less the same as the one Frost had been put into, the doors of which were just being opened by its driver.

  Blake hurried across the yard and held up his ID.

  “Hang on mate,” he said to the driver. “Is there anybody in there?”

  The driver stared, surprised at him. “No, I was just checking it over.”

  “Do you know if this is the same sort of van that was used for Thomas Frost’s transfer?”

  The driver shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that. But if it was just him being moved, then yeah, probably. Help yourself. Just make sure old Hawthorne knows I’m not slacking off.”

  Blake nodded and indicated for Sally to join him. She left Hawthorne standing by the door and ran across the yard towards him as Blake climbed into the back of the van.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked as she stepped up.

  “Millions,” replied Blake glancing around at the interior of the van.

  “Millions?”

  “Must be. Millions of prisoners that have been transported in vans like this up and down the country and never has any of them simply disappeared from the inside of one. I mean, look at it!”

  He knocked on the side of the van and then turned the large handle on the compartment door in the centre. In both instances, the loud sound of steel clanging echoed around the van.

  “The whole thing is impenetrable, because its whole purpose is to be unescapable from.”

  “So, how did Frost get out then?” Sally asked him. “We saw him get in there.”

  “Did we though?” Blake asked, lowering his voice, aware of Hawthorne peering at them from across the yard. “Think back to that first news report. The door to the van hid Frost from view, we don’t actually see him getting into the van. He could have just stepped to the side, hidden somewhere, and then made his way out another way. We don’t see anything once that door opens.”

  “We don’t, no,” Sally said slowly “But you know who did see him get in? The whole cavalcade of police that were surrounding the van, including the cars that were behind it, ready to go.”

  Blake grimaced in frustration as he felt the first idea he had had about how Frost had disappeared slip through his fingers.

  “Even if we can somehow prove that these two prison officers who apparently put him in there were dodgy, what about the rest of the police that accompanied him down?”

  Blake sighed as he opened up the compartment where Frost would have sat again and peered inside.

  It was small, cramped and, as Blake had suspected, would be completely impossible to escape from, especially when handcuffed. He glanced upwards and narrowed his eyes. Just visible in the dark gloominess of the compartment was the camera that would have been in place in Frost’s van and recorded him somehow vanishing.

  “And that’s something else altogether,” Blake muttered.

  “What?”

  “That footage of him in the van and he lights going off and suddenly he’s disappeared. Now, let’s dare to presume for a moment that he isn’t some sort of magician who has the power to dim the light around him and then evaporate into thin air. That would mean that it was some sort of video editing job. Who’s done that for him? If he never left Manchester, then that means he can’t have gone that far when it all happened.”

  “You’re thinking it’s some sort of inside job?” Sally asked.

  “I think it’s pretty likely,” Blake murmered, stepping down from the van and watching Hawthorne, who was standing on the edge of the yard looking pensively back at them. “It wouldn’t surprise me if, for example, it transpired that somebody in this prison has a degree in video production. That tape of him in the van was faked, I know it was.”

  As he nodded to the van driver that they were finished, Blake looked around the yard and found himself struck by the same feeling that he had had when he was watching the footage of Frost inside the van. He knew something was wrong, but he could not quite work out what.

  “Now what’s wrong with you?” Sally asked him.

  “Something about this yard,” Blake murmered, his brain whirring. “It’s almost as if –”

  The sound of Sally’s phone in her pocket interrupted him and Blake felt the faint traces of an idea fade away from his brain like smoke.

  “Yeah, go ahead,” Sally said into her phone as they walked across the yard and past Hawthorne.

  “Can you let us out please?” Blake told him curtly.

  Hawthorne merely nodded and led them through the large steel doors.

  “You sure about this?” Sally asked her caller. “I mean, are we sure this is the right thing to do?”

  Blake frowned at her but remained silent until they were almost at the entrance to the prison where he thanked Hawthorne for his time and told him that he was very likely going to be needed to be spoken to again.

  As the prison manager closed the door behind them, Sally finished her call.

  “That was Fox,” she said as they walked back across the carpark, which was now dimly lit from the streetlights nearby as the evening drew nearer. “So, I’ve got good news and bad news.”

  “Okay.”

  “The good news is that you don’t have to give a statement anymore.”

  Blake raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had been dreading having to work out how to word what he needed to say to the public. “Oh. That’s something at least. What’s the bad news?”

  Sally grimaced. “I’ve got to drive you straight to Media City. You’re being interviewed on News at Ten.”

  “What?”

  Sally bit her lip in regret. “Look, don’t shoot the messenger. The top story is going to be Helen Beauchamp’s murder. Fox is very keen that it’s you. According to her, we need to make the public feel as if we’re on the case and doing something about this, and like she said, you were the face of the investigation that caught him last time.”

  Blake gro
aned as he opened the car door and climbed inside. “Why do I get the feeling I don’t have a lot of choice in this? Who’s interviewing me?”

  As Sally started the car and began to drive them towards the main road, her silence and the nervous expression bathed in orange from an overhead streetlamp gave Blake all the response he needed.

  “No…” Blake murmered, closing his eyes in dread. “Not Theresa Bowen? She hated us last time! Sally, she hates the police. She’s going to make this as difficult as she can!”

  “You’ll be fine!” Sally said shrilly, though to Blake she sounded thoroughly unconvinced.

  Eleven

  Harrison stared ahead out of the window of the bus, his head bouncing against the glass as the wheels went over the numerous potholes on the road towards Clackton General. Normally, he would have felt all too aware of how uncomfortable this journey always was on the antique buses that were used on the route, but all he could currently feel was extreme anxiety for Blake and the fact that Thomas Frost was running around the streets of the same city as him.

  Jacqueline was also playing on his mind. He knew that, by rights, he should not have been giving her as much thought as he was, but he had known her for long enough to be able to see that she was not a bad person. Maybe, he thought, he was gullible and naïve, but from what he had heard Jacqueline saying, she had only attacked Tom in order to protect both her son and Blake from whatever Frost had planned.

  The bus stopped and Harrison stepped off, looking up at the hospital with a feeling of great trepidation. The last thing he wanted to do was be in the same room as Tom again, but he knew that he needed to find out some answers. Harmschapel police were doing all they could, he knew that, but the cloak and dagger approach Angel had used and the fact that Blake had apparently had a detective inspector working in his station without his knowledge suggested to Harrison that he was best off trying to find answers for himself.

  Once he arrived on the ward, however, Harrison realised that he had forgotten that visiting hours had already finished for the day. As he gingerly approached the reception desk, the nurse, who he suspected by now could play solitaire as an Olympic sport, glared up at him from her game on the computer.

  “Yes?”

  “Good evening,” Harrison said with what he hoped was a winning smile. “I was hoping to speak to Tom Pattison. He’s just in that room there?”

  “I know where he is,” snapped the nurse, ignoring Harrison’s pointing. “I’m also aware that visiting hours finished half an hour ago.”

  “I know, but this is rather important,” Harrison replied.

  “I’m sorry, you’ll have to come back tomorrow,” she told him, returning to the computer screen and clicking quickly on the mouse.

  Harrison was just about to turn around and walk back out the ward when a thought struck him. In the split second he had taken to consider whether what he was about to say was a bad idea, he realised the words had already fallen out of his mouth.

  “It’s police business.”

  The nurse glanced up at him again. “Police?”

  All Harrison could do was nod, cursing himself for even considering something that, once again, he suspected was highly illegal.

  “Do you have any identification?” the nurse asked, glancing down at Harrison’s scruffy jeans and trainers.

  With his mouth suddenly feeling quite dry, Harrison slowly pulled his wallet out of his pocket, frantically trying to work out whether he could convince her that he had left his supposed ID in the car.

  Then, just as he was filling for time by flicking through the cards in his wallet, a rapid beeping came from the nurse’s pager on her lapels. She tutted and stared at the message then stood up, looking irritated. “Oh, look, just make it quick, okay? I’ve got to do the evening drug run shortly, I can hardly do that while I’ve got police in the way, can I?”

  Before Harrison could reply, she had stormed off down the corridor. Unable to believe his luck, he pushed his wallet back in his pocket and walked around the desk to Tom’s room.

  He opened the door and felt a familiar sense of anger rising up inside him at the sight of Tom, lying in bed, staring at the television hanging on the wall above him. He looked across as the door opened, his expression dropping when he saw Harrison.

  For a moment, the two of them stared at each other without a word.

  “Harrison,” Tom said at last. “This is a surprise.”

  “Is it?” Harrison asked coldly, closing the door behind him. “It’s difficult to tell with you. You know, after all your careful planning to get my boyfriend murdered.”

  Tom sighed. “Have you just come here for another fight? I’m pretty sure visiting hours are over. I could just call the nurse.”

  “I could just smother you with a pillow,” Harrison replied, pulling up a chair. “Only regret I’d have is that I didn’t do it sooner.”

  “You don’t have that in you.”

  “And you do? Inherited all Daddy’s psycho genes? I’ve just been in the police station. I was listening to your mother giving her interview.”

  “Have they charged her yet?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tom shrugged and stared at the television. “Shame Blake isn’t here. From what I’ve heard, he tends to get all his charging and locking up done without all the messing around. Maybe Harmschapel does miss him.”

  Harrison shook his head in disbelief. “You’re unbelievable. I mean, have you actually thought about what you’ve been doing? Do you know what that woman actually went through to keep you safe?”

  “Oh, spare me the soap opera,” Tom spat. “Safe? She tried to kill me, Harrison. Her own son.”

  “She tried to stop you turning into the man that she got you away from.”

  Tom merely rolled his eyes.

  “You do know that Thomas Frost is the reason you even came to Harmschapel in the first place?” Harrison asked him. “Even twenty-five years ago, the signs were there. You think Jacqueline hitting you over the head is your biggest problem? Frost threatened to kill both her and you. She ran away and left him because she knew that he’d kill both of you without a second’s thought. This whole serial killer thing, it wasn’t just something that he started doing overnight. He’s been like that for years, way before you were even born.”

  Tom’s eyes remained fixed to the television.

  “Just think about that,” Harrison said slowly. “That man was threatening to kill you before you were even born. The mere threat of you not being his son and you were suddenly disposable, just to get back at Jacqueline for whatever he saw as unacceptable behaviour.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tom replied quietly.

  “Don’t I?”

  “No.” His voice suddenly rose and he stared at Harrison, his eyes wide. “He told me everything that Mum had ever done. You think it was easy? Learning that I’d be lied to for so many years? All my life I’d called Stuart Pattison ‘dad’ and it was a lie every time I said it! Your parents might both be in prison, Harrison, but no matter what they did, at least you know that they’re your flesh and blood.”

  “How did you find out?” Harrison asked him. “About Frost I mean?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I care because you’ve put my boyfriend in danger.”

  Tom’s lip curled. Harrison suspected that he had, for a brief moment, thought Harrison was actually concerned for him.

  “When I was at uni, me and my friends got into finding out about our family trees,” Tom said quietly. “It was just a craze that was going around my course at the time. Everybody was obsessed with it. The idea was that we would find out about a few generations and then we could get it all drawn up into an artistic tree thing that you could frame. I was going to get it all done for Mum as a surprise. The anniversary of Dad’s…Stuart’s death was coming up so I thought it would be nice for her. So, one day, when I knew she was out of Harmschapel visiting friends for a few days, I cam
e back from uni without telling her, let myself into the house and started trying to find something to get me started. You know, old photographs, newspaper clippings, whatever. Couldn’t find a thing. I thought it was a bit weird, but then I remembered that she kept a load of stuff in the attic, so I went in there.”

  He paused as he took a sip of water from the cup next to the bed. Harrison watched him, studying him intently for any sign that he was lying.

  “Anyway, I find a few bits and pieces from Stuart’s family history, and I was just starting to write a few notes down when I found something else in a battered envelope at the bottom of an old cardboard box. Guess what it was.”

  Harrison merely shrugged.

  “My birth certificate. And guess who it doesn’t say is my father.”

  Again, Harrison remained silent.

  “I recognised the name ‘Thomas Frost,’ so I started doing my own research. Imagine my surprise when my father is the first result in any search engine. Then I went back to uni and just battled with it for a few months. I mean, if any news story I could find was to be believed, my dad was an evil serial killer. The news can lie though, Harrison. Anything to sell papers.”

  “Go on. When did you get in touch with him?”

  “I can’t remember. A couple of years ago, not that long after. I wrote to him, didn’t think I’d ever hear back, but then I got a visit request through the post the following week. Then I went to see him.”

  Tom shrugged his broad shoulders and looked at Harrison with a little less anger in his eyes. “He told me everything. How the media had completely misrepresented what had happened, how they’d just jumped on him on being this killer in Manchester because the police were struggling to find the real culprit…”

  “Wait, hang on,” Harrison said in disbelief. “He told you that he wasn’t a serial killer? And you believed him?”

  “He admitted that he’d killed one woman,” Tom replied. “It was an accident when he was younger and he regrets it, Harrison. I know he does! If he could turn back the clock, he would.”