"No-one's cut out for Ted," Laura said angrily. "So don't be so daft. You'll outlast him, you'll see. One day he'll get into one of these rages and just explode all over the newsroom floor in a puddle of beer and chip butties." Grant's diet, mostly ingested at the Lamb and Flag, was legend on the Gazette and Jane gave a hysterical giggle in spite of herself.
"You may not be God's gift to reporting but you can write, Jane," Laura said. "Don't let that miserable old sod tell you you can't. You'll be able to take over the features from me when I pack it in. Don't forget, I've been here ten years. It's just a question for me of getting out under my own steam or waiting to be pushed."
Jane had shaken her head vigorously at that analysis, but it was not one which Laura had invented simply to cheer the younger woman up. It was a thought which had distracted her all the way home, as it often did. If one day Ted did push her into handing in her resignation, as well he might, or pushed himself into sacking her in a fit of temper - less likely as they both knew that she was too good at her job to be cast aside lightly - it might not be altogether a bad thing, she thought. It would force a move that she would have made years ago if it had not been for Joyce.
Tonight, though, the row in the office merely provoked her into tackling her report for the television company with a grim determination to make it sufficiently enticing to tempt the film crew up the motor-way to start a thorough re-investigation of the Tracy Miller case.
Dispassionately she reviewed what she had learned from Linda Smith about Stephen Butcher's movements that day. He had come home from school at four as usual, met Linda and gone home with her, leaving her flat on the second floor at about four thirty, Linda thought. As far as she could remember Stephen had gone up the stairs in the direction of his own home at that point, which was consistent with his claim that he had watched television for some time before going down to the recreation field to look for friends to play football with.
He had said that the flat was empty when he got home, though his step-father later said that he had not gone out with the younger child to look for Tracy until almost five. Even more damning was Jerry Hurst's claim that he had seen Stephen leaving the flats some time before five, in plenty of time to commit murder at the time the forensic evidence suggested that it had been committed.
Linda was right, Laura thought, in thinking that her evidence would not give Stephen any sort of an alibi. But the fact that the police had never followed up her offer of evidence might be important. Even if they thought the Linda was not worth interviewing, they should certainly have told the defence of her existence. It was undisclosed evidence and might be enough to persuade the TV company to let her go a step or two further with her investigation. Harry Huddleston remained a challenge she would dearly like to take up if Case Re-opened thought it worthwhile.
As far as she was concerned, anything the repellent Jerry Hurst said might also be suspect, although she admitted there was no more to that conviction than sheer prejudice. Perhaps, she thought, she ought to make one last effort before completing her report to pin Jerry down.
She closed up her computer with a sigh, poured herself a large vodka and tonic and put an old Queen album onto the stereo. It took her back to her school-days when she had thought Freddie Mercury was a close approximation to God. That idol had been smashed too, she thought, as she curled up with her drink with her mammoth tee-shirt pulled tight over her knees looking young enough to still be perched on the top bunk in her school dormitory and wishing, just as fervently as she had then, that she did not have to curl up alone.
CHAPTER 12
"Let me get this quite clear," chief inspector Thackeray said to DC Val Ridley who was perched slightly nervously on a chair in front of his desk mid-way through the next morning with a half-pleased smile on her face. The chief inspector was in shirt-sleeves, his tie loosened, the window behind him wide open but not bringing much freshness in from the dusty square outside. The humid weather had returned this morning with a vengeance, the coolness after the weekend rain no more than a refreshing memory as the heat began to build again.
"Let me get this straight," Thackeray said. "According to the council the flat is let to Bill Stansfield, who has lived there for twenty years. The rent is paid like clock-work. His name is still on the electoral roll and he registered for the poll tax. But according to a neighbour on the same floor, old Bill Stansfield died five years ago, and the flat was taken over by a younger man who calls himself John ?"
"Just John usually, sir," Val Ridley said. "Occasionally he's implied he's old Mr. Stansfield's son. But according to the neighbour who knew Bill Stansfield best, he never had a son. Just a daughter who lives somewhere in Leeds and turned up for the funeral. He can't remember her married name, though, so she may be hard to trace."
"And the council was never told the old man had died?"
"Apparently not. According to his neighbour he was an independent character who never had anything to do with social services. He collapsed with a heart attack one day after walking up the stairs because the lift was out of order." Val Ridley could not disguise the look of disgust which briefly crossed her sharp features. "It's a wonder more of them don't drop dead in that dump," she muttered half to herself. Thackeray permitted himself a faint smile of sympathy but was not to be distracted from her report.
"You just talked to one of the neighbours?" he asked. DC Ridley shook her neat blond head sharply.
"I talked to everyone on the top floor, sir," she said. "There are ten flats. Three have been boarded up for some time, and the squatters don't seem to have got into them." She consulted her notes carefully. "Then there's the burnt out flat, Mrs. Sullivan's, which has been boarded up as well now. And her friend Linda Smith has been moved out too, for her own safety, the council says, so that's five of them empty.
"The elderly couple who remember Bill Stansfield live between the Sullivan and Smith flats, name of Garside. She's a bit deaf and not much help, but he's a sharp old boy, quite clear about Stansfield's death. They used to play dominos together at the social club, apparently. Then there's a black family called Macdonald who haven't been there long. They don't remember Bill Stansfield at all and have only passed John on the stairs. Then there's a man called Miller, lives with his daughter, next door to the Stansfield flat."
"Paul Miller?" Thackeray asked thoughtfully.
"Yes, that's right. Paul and Kelly. But he didn't seem to know much about the old boy or John , in spite of living next door. "Very quiet," he said John was, "kept himself to himself, just like the old man." But as his daughter seems to keep her stereo on full-blast most of the time I shouldn't think they'd hear anything if there was bloody murder going on next door."
"Does Miller not remember anything about the old boy?"
"Not much, he said. But he definitely thought John was the older Stansfield's son, though he couldn't remember whether John had actually told him that or whether he'd just made that assumption when he moved in."
Val Ridley closed her notebook and looked expectantly at Thackeray, but the chief inspector did not respond to her report with either the praise she sought or the blame she feared. He leaned back in his chair for a moment, eyes closed in thought as he tried to recall his own encounter on the top floor of Bronte with the man who had unequivocally called himself Stansfield, a man with a young Alsatian dog.
"Ten flats," he said at last, swinging his chair back to the floor with a bump and leaning towards DC Ridley across the desk, his blue eyes bright. "Ten flats, two murders in ten years, another death not reported to people who should have known about it, a flat occupied by someone who may or may not be the previous occupant's son. Coincidence do you think?"
"Two murders?" Val Ridley said, surprised.
"Paul Miller's daughter Tracy was murdered ten years ago this summer. Two murders. Two children." Thackeray glanced away for a moment, his face bleak. So he really does care, his detective constable thought to herself with a sense of relief at having penet
rated, however briefly, that previously impenetrable mask.
"They couldn't be connected...?" she hesitated, unable to follow his reasoning.
"No, I don't think they're connected," Thackeray said. "Not directly anyway. It's just an indication of how long Bronte House has been at the mercy of predators of one sort and another. Time, I think, it was cleaned up for good."
"Shall I go and talk to this John Stansfield, then, sir?" she asked enthusiastically.
"Did you run the name through our own computers when you checked his car details?" Thackeray asked. She reddened slightly and shook her head.
"So do that, Val. Have a look at the house-to-house interviews that were done after the Josie Renton attack. Check the names off against the tenants' lists. I want to be sure that there's no-one else living there under false pretences. And then we'll both go and talk to our mysterious Mr. Stansfield," he said. "Another thing I want to ask him is where his car was yesterday. The garage belonging to his flat was empty when we searched them - apart from a can of petrol. Which may be quite innocent, of course. It wasn't the only one. Or it may not. Give me half an hour? And well done."
She gave him a tentative smile of relief at that before leaving him alone. He sat thoughtfully for a moment, easing his sticky shirt from between his shoulder blades, a look of uncharacteristic uncertainty on his face as he turned his attention to a bright red flyer which had been sitting on his desk for more than a week. It was advertising a jazz festival across the dales in Harrogate and he had been intending to book himself tickets ever since it had arrived.
"Dear God, there's no harm in it," he said to himself at last, although he was not at all clear whether he was trying to convince himself, the Deity or a third party who tended to always loom large in his private thoughts. With a convulsive movement, he picked up the phone and booked the last two tickets for the festival's opening concert the following week.
Laura Ackroyd turned angrily away from Jerry Hurst's well defended front door, which had just been slammed in her face, and found herself almost falling into the arms of detective chief inspector Michael Thackeray. Taken by surprise, they stood and looked at each other in disbelief for a moment. Thackeray quickly regained his composure and turned to Val Ridley who had followed close behind him out of the lift after an equally unavailing attempt to locate the so-called John Stansfield on the top floor.
"Wait for me in the car for a minute," he said to the startled DC, who was too surprised to demur. Thackeray held the heavy front door open for Laura in a slightly ironic gesture of old-fashioned courtesy and she preceded him out into the fresh air, hoping that it would take the heat quickly from her flushed cheeks. She walked slowly down the tarmacked path towards the road where she had parked her Beetle unwittingly behind an unmarked police car where DC Ridley was now sitting studiously looking the other way.
"Wait, Laura," Thackeray said quietly, catching up with her and putting a hand on her arm. "Please."
She turned back towards him, her face impassive, letting her hair fall forward a little to hide the expression in her eyes. She did not, she thought, with unexpected annoyance, remembering their last meeting, want to give this man any encouragement he had not worked very hard for. He owed her that, at least.
"Are you covering the Darren Sullivan death?" he asked, cooler now, responding to her mood. Laura shrugged.
"Amongst other things," she said. "Just a follow-up on the estate. I wanted to talk to Linda Smith but apparently she's been moved out too. I'll have to ask the town hall where she's gone. I don't suppose you know, do you?" Thackeray shook his head.
"I expect we do, but I couldn't tell you even if I knew the address personally. Which I don't."
"No, I don't suppose you could," Laura agreed coldly. She glanced up at the cliff face of the flats above them, no more than half the windows reflecting the sunlight, the rest blind and boarded up, the whole structure disfigured by rain and smoke-damage, a monstrous monument to urban neglect and decay and Mrs Thatcher, she thought bitterly.
"Are you making any progress?" she asked, aware that he was becoming stony faced in the teeth of her evident indifference. "Or wouldn't you tell me that either?"
"Of course I would, if there was anything much to tell," he said, unable to hide his dissatisfaction with the progress of the police inquiries on the estate. "You think the police close ranks when they're threatened," he said. "It's nothing to what this place can do. And you? Have you got Harry Huddleston nicely framed for television yet?"
Laura turned away and walked slowly the rest of the way to her car, giving herself time to think, before turning back to face Thackeray. For the first time since she had met him she felt that perhaps the conflict between their professions might be be too much. She knew Thackeray would not want to hear about the flaws she had detected in Huddleston's murder inquiry. Part of him - and she hoped it was only part - would prefer to leave Linda Smith and her son in the decent obscurity they had clung to all this time. She would have to tell him soon, but not, she decided, just yet.
"It'll take a mammoth frame to fit your Harry," she said lightly, pushing back her wayward hair and revealing a gleam of amusement in her eyes. "Come on, chief inspector, you've done your duty and checked up on me. Was there anything else?"
Looking at Laura leaning slightly backwards against the car door, slim in a cream shirt and demure green skirt, the startling red hair escaping from its clips and the grey-green eyes full of laughter, Thackeray realised he was being teased and felt a sense of immense relief flow through him. He knew very clearly what he wanted to ask Laura Ackroyd, though the time was not ripe and might never be.
"Do you like jazz?" he said instead. It was the last question she had expected and she laughed in surprise.
"Yes," she said. "Within reason."
"I've got two tickets for the Harrogate festival - Wednesday next week. Would you like to come?" She agreed quickly, trying to hide her disappointment that next Wednesday was eight days away, but he was too perceptive for her.
"And have supper with me tonight? Though I don't think I'll be free until late. Can I pick you up?"
"Would you like me to cook supper for you?" she asked impulsively. "I'll do something that will keep, so you can come round whenever you're ready."
"I'd like that," Thackeray said. "Probably about nine?"
He held the door for her as she got into her car and turned away to join Val Ridley, who was waiting patiently at the wheel of the police car. The detective constable looked curiously at him as she drew away from the kerb, but Thackeray's expression had resumed its most formidable impassivity.
Outside Bronte House Laura sat in the driving seat for a moment, trying to disentangle the jumble of emotions which had overtaken her. Suddenly she gave a whoop of triumph which astonished two elderly women passing close to the car. Then she slammed the Beetle into first gear and drove somewhat erratically back towards the town centre and the office from which she had taken an illicit half hour off.
Kevin Mower lay flat on his stomach on the bed dressed only in a pair of Pink Panther boxer shorts. Patches of technicolour bruising on his shoulder and low on his back bore testimony to his recent unpleasant experience on the Heights. His eyes were closed and he was breathing rhythmically; one arm was trailing over the edge of the bed, the other flung across the half from which Sue Raban had just extricated herself. Slim, elegant and completely naked, she was moving softly around her bed-sitter, picking up abandoned items of underwear from the floor and putting them on.
In the tiny kitchen which was screened off from the main part of the light and lofty Victorian room by a divider luxuriant with trailing plants, she poured herself a glass of orange juice from the fridge and switched on a radio, keeping the volume low so as not to disturb her guest. Glass in hand, she wandered back to her wardrobe and took out a low-cut sun-dress in shocking pink cotton which she slipped over her lacy body. The colour lit up the room like some exotic flower, enhancing her dark skin, sti
ll damp from the shower. She looked at herself briefly in the mirror, adjusted a gold ear-ring and smiled faintly in satisfaction. She looked good and she knew it.
Almost absent mindedly she picked up the teeshirt of the man she knew as O'Donnell, which he had discarded close to the bed, smoothed it out and hung it over the arm of a chair. Then she reached for his jeans, which had been flung carelessly across to the other side of the room. Undressing, she recalled with a faint stirring of renewed excitement, had been an impulsive affair as they had fallen into each other's arms almost before they had crossed the threshold of the flat. Little enough had been said when she had invited him in but little enough needed to be put into words. Days of close proximity at the playground had left neither of them in any doubt about that.
A soft thud distracted her attention. She looked down and saw that some sort of wallet had fallen from the pocket of O'Donnell's jeans. She picked it up idly and flicked it open, to find a police warrant card in the name of Kevin Mower in her hand, but the unmistakeable image of Kevin O'Donnell staring owlishly up at her, a familiar face, if somewhat more kempt than she was accustomed to.
The expletive she used was not in any language which Mower or anyone else in Bradfield would have recognised. The fury in her face needed no translation.
"You bastard! Are you awake, you bastard?"
She shook the sleeping Mower roughly on the shoulder. He rolled over with a lazy grin of reminiscence on his face, reaching out to take her by the arm and pull her onto the bed. Losing her balance, she sat down abruptly beside him but instead of the embrace he expected, she gave him a sharp backhanded slap which brought him abruptly back to full consciousness.
"What...?" he asked, rubbing his stinging cheek and pushing himself upright against the head of the bed and wincing as his bruised back protested. "What was that for?" She waved the warrant card at him angrily and understanding came quickly.
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