Dying Fall

by Patricia Hall

  She met his eyes and nodded impassively as she got up and led the child to the hut, where she proceeded to wash the wound and put a plaster on it while Mower stood in the doorway watching, his fierce anger gradually ebbing away to be replaced by something akin to pity. When she had finished she stood up and gave the child an affectionate push out of the door.

  “I thought you'd come back,” she said. You or your boss. I knew he didn't believe me.”

  “You were covering for Sissons,” Mower said. “Stansfield. King John. Whatever he calls himself. You knew what he was up to.”

  “Not really,” she said. “ I knew he was a bastard, just like I knew you were. I just put it down to you both being men. I fancied him just the same. And I thought he was the sort of men these people need – someone local and tough, someone to stand up for them.”

  “And me?” Mower asked bitterly.

  “You?” She gave him the ghost of a smile. “I just thought you were snooping, a bit nosy – John thought it was a good idea to keep an eye on you...” She shrugged.

  “A close eye,” Mower said angrily.

  “Sorry,” she said. I thought you enjoyed it. I didn't know you were a cop until that day I found your ID.”

  “And you told Stansfield everything?”

  “I had no reason not to,” she said. “I thought he was probably involved in car crime, but he never said much. He was very secretive.”

  “Thackeray wants you at the police station,” Mower said. Sue smiled faintly again.

  “He sent you to prove you're still a good boy, did he?”

  “You realise that if you're charged and found guilty you could be deported?”

  “I guess I'd better tell him what he wants to know then, hadn't I?”

  By midday Laura had committed her story to the first edition and was leaning over Fred Power's proof to see how it looked in print. Nicky's photograph was prominently displayed again beside a picture of her mother, re-eyed and distraught as she had left her home the previous day to take refuge with fiends who were supporting her on either side.

  Laura's eye-witness account of how she had discovered Nicky's body was displayed in bold type down one side of the page alongside the crime reporter's latest update on the police operation. Ted was even now composing his latest editorial broadside on crime and punishment in his office, from which an occasional expletive could be heard as he pounded his ancient typewriter as if it too deserved the sort of painful physical chastisement he was confidently recommending.

  “It looks good,” Laura said, and as a piece of tabloid display it did look good. Fred knew his job and melded pictures with text to impressive effect. But Laura felt no satisfaction at the contribution she had made to the finished paper today. On this story she had penetrated too far beneath the sanitised version of reality which was all the Gazette ever saw fit to print to feel comfortable with what she had written. She knew it would not make her readers weep as it ought to make them weep and as she knew the best of her profession could make them weep. The Gazette did not want life too raw and too upsetting and Laura knew she was conniving in a lie.

  She went back to her desk and logged off her computer terminal, Intending to go to lunch, but before she could leave her desk the phone rang. The voice at the other end did not identify itself immediately, but she recognised Stephen Webster's mother, a little uncertain, a little breathless, though whether with hope or fear it was impossible to tell.

  “This little girl?” June Baker said. “Do you reckon it's the same man who killed our Tracy? Was it the same sort of attack? Does it mean our Stephen's in the clear after all?”

  Laura thought of Thackeray's strictures and of the apparently acrimonious conversations Ted Grant had had with superintendent Longley before he had reluctantly agreed to hold off making that particular connection in print. She felt that she had to prevaricate.

  “That's very difficult to say at this stage, Mrs Baker,” she said carefully. “But I'm sure it's something the police will consider.” There was a long silence at the other end before June Baker spoke again and when she did she sounded even more breathless.

  “I went to see Paul the other day, you see. I thought maybe I could persuade him to remember a bit more clearly about the times, what he said in court and that. He went all funny on me. He was very angry with Kelly about something, said she'd been arrested and she was a little tart. And then he said that if I wanted to get at thetruth about Stephen I should talk to Jerry the caretaker. He said he'd backed Jerry up because he said he'd seen Stve going out and because – well, really, because he wanted to believe that Steve had done it.”

  “Are you saying he's not sure any more?” Laura asked, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  “He didn't seem sure about anything any more. He was ranting and Raving about kelly and the little girl who was attacked – what was her name? Josie – and the squatters. He got himself into a right state.”

  “This was before Nicky disappeared?”

  “Oh yes,” Mrs Baker said. “I should think he'll be even more upset now.”

  “Did you talk to Jerry Hurst?” Laura persisted.

  “No, he wasn't around when I left. I hadn't told my husband I was going up to Wuthering. I had to get home to get his tea or he'd have thought there was something funny going on. Can tou get your tv people to talk to him? Or the police?”

  “Yes,” Laura said. “I'm sure I can.”

  When June Baker had hung up, she sat staring at her phone for a moment before shaking her head. She would tackle Paul Miller one more time, she thought, before bothering the police. If he really was changing his story after all this time she wanted an interview with him before the forces of law and order moved in and made him inaccessible to the Press.

  Even if there was a quick arrest it would still be a useful back ground interview when the trial was over, particularly if Stephen Webster was cleared of any involvement in Tracy Miller's murder the release of another innocent man after a long period in jail would hit the headlines in a big way and Ted Grant would want all the details her could get. She slipped a new tape into her recorder, put it in her bag and left the office with a tingle of excitement driving her on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Harry Huddleston paced up and down Superintendent Jack Longley's office like a much provoked caged animal. His bright green Aertex sports-shirt was strained into creases across his chest and belly. His beige slacks slipped dangerously low at front and rear. But it was his florid complexion that help the attention of the other two men in the room.

  Huddleston had caught the sun: or perhaps it would be fairer to say that the sun had caught Huddleston as he had sat an hour or so too long on the Headingley terraces with no more than a knotted handkerchief for protection, regarding anything so practical as a hat as a southern affectation that no affection that no real man would contemplate. The sun had stripped the skin from his nose and forehead and abraded his temper to match. On top of that, Yorkshire had lost to Middlessex by four wickets. The pale blue eyes glittered like chips of ice unexpectedly flung into the molten heart of a volcano. Harry Huddleston was very angry indeed.

  “I don't care of the lad turns out to be the bloody Angel Gabriel himself,” he said. “He confessed to that bloody murder and we did not bully him. I didn't, Sergeant Redding didn't. And no other bugger got close enough to get a chance, I promise you that. And then there was corroboration. No one witness. Two of them. What more did we need? He never claimed he had an alibi. Why should we go looking for an alibi when we'd got a bloody confession, answer me that?”

  “If the lad is cleared at this late stage there's bound to be an inquiry,” Longley said coldly. “You know there's nowt we can do about that, Harry. “It'll be way out of my hands. I don't like it any more than you do. It reflects on the whole division, not just on you.”

  “So what do you think about it, lad?” Huddleston said objectionably, turning to Michael Thackeray who had been watching the two
older men impassively, quite convinced that if either Huddleston or Redding had beaten Stephen Webster to within an inch of his life, or ignored a whole platoon of inconvenient witnesses, neither of them would ever admit it. There code, the old code of loyalty to the job, would never allow it.

  “You're standing there as if the cat's got your tongue. Do you reckon it's the same bugger killed both little lasses, or don't you?” Huddleston asked.

  “It's too early to tell,” Thackeray said carefully, keeping his own temper well under control. But there are similarities. She had no shoes on when she was found. Just socks, and they'd picked up some dark fibres from somewhere else, according to the SOCO report. They don't match anything in the bungalow. I've got a search on for her trainers, pink and white her mother says, almost new. My guess is that she wasn't killed there, she was dumped after she died. But the most significant factor from your point of view is that black plastic bag. She went iinto that before she died, Amost Atherton says. She'd caught the plastic between her teeth, just like Tracy Miller did.”

  “Aye, I remember that from his report on the Miller child,” Huddleston said sombrely, his attention caught now by the problem, his own predicament forgotten, temporarily at least. He gave Thackeray a look of calculated appraisal and nodded, as if concluding that his successor might make the grade yet.

  “I tell you what,” he said grudgingly. “If you give me the file I'll go through it and see if there's owt significant I can recall that's not in there. Would that help?” Thackeray glanced at Longley for guidance and the superintendent nodded.

  “I'd be grateful,” Thackeray said formally. “You can use my office – your old office – if you like. I've some other matters I need to talk to the super about and then I'm going up to the Heights.”

  “I'll buy you a pint at the Woolpack about twelve-thirty, Harry,” Longley said as the ex-chief inspector took the buff file from his desk and made to leave.

  “Aye, you owe me one,” Huddleston said grimly as he closed the door. Longley leaned back in his chair, pale blue eyes half closed, as they listened to Huddleston's heavy foorfalls receding down the corridor.

  “So you really think he got it wrong, do you?” he asked. Thackeray shrugged.

  “I'm sorry,” he said, knowing how much Longley would dislike his conclusion. “Whatever you say about tape-recorded interviews at least it gives you some idea of what' going on behind those closed doors. Back then...?” He shrugged again. “A young lad, frightened, confused, upset probabbly if he was fond of the child. It wouldn't necessarily take much pressure. Harry Huddleston could put the fear of God into me if he put his mind to it, so what chance would Stephen Webster have?”

  He knew personally what pressure senior officers could exert in the privacy of the interview room. At the point where his life had been running out of control towards a precipice it was just such pressure which had been used on him. In his case it had dragged him back from the edge. In others, he guessed, it could just as easily administer the fatal push.

  “And he should have talked to the girl-friend,” Thackeray went on. “Or given the defence the chance to talk to the girl-friend. However certain you are, there's always that chance you might be wrong. No-one's infallible.”

  “Ten years,” Longley said grimly and Thackeray knew that he had come to his own conclusion and that it was not so different from his own. “Ten years, God help us. The media'll have us for breakfast, dinner and tea.”

  Thackeray nodded wryly, thinking of one reporter in particular who would be very anxious to put the record straight on Tracy Miller as soon as the chance presented itself. The longer Longley remained in ignorance of what he would probably regard as consorting with the enemy the better, he thought. He pushed the insistently seductive image of Laura Ackroyd slipping out of her silky pyjama top out of his mind with difficulty.

  “I've put out calls for Jerry Hurst and for John Sissons,” he said. “Neither of them has been seen for two days and I want to talk to them both.”

  “Two suspects?”

  “Too soon to tell,” Thackeray said. “There's the father too. You can never rule father's out. But we need to eliminate the other two, at least. And there's other matters to take up with Sissons – what he's been doing in that flat, for instance, and where he got his very desirable wheels and the rest of his gear on a housing clerk's salary. I've caught up with his girlfriend and should get something useful out of her, I think.”

  “Right,” Longley said gloomily, hunched up in his chair, his fleshy face collapsing over his collar and his military striped tie. “I can't see there's going to be much satisfaction at the end of this one, Michael, however it turns out. There'll be mud flying our way whatever happens. It'll be a public relations disaster. It's not what I was looking forward to at this stage in my career, I can tell you.”

  “Well, I can live with public relations disasters if I get the bastard who did it,” Thackeray said flatly, provoked by Longley's taking what he felt was a wider view too far.

  “Aye, well, you'd best get on with it then,” Longley said, irritated. “Les Dobson will thank for one, because there's no way his uniformed are going to calm that bloody estate down until this beggar's found, you can bank on that. And until it's calmed down this divisions name will be mud at county.”

  “Sir,” Thackeray said, turning to the door to hide his annoyance. “I'll keep you in touch.”

  Paul Miller squirmed in his seat, pressing himself into the corner of the well-worn sofa and wringing his hands under Laura's uncompromising gaze. She had been surprised when Miller had agreed to be interviewed for Case Reopened, but guessed that the discovery of another murdered child had shaken him out of a ten year silence.

  “It were obvious the little bastard 'ad done it,” he said again, his pale eyes pleading with her for sympathy. “Jerry saw his going out when he said he were here. It were obvious. And there were them porn magazines in his room. The police found them when they searched. Dirty little beggar, he must have done it.”

  “But you told June the other day that Jerry pressured you,” Laura said sharply.

  “It were her doing the pressuring,” Miller said. “Cow! She's still crackers about that lad. She always were. They both were. I came no-where in their little set-up except for paying t'bills.”

  “Both?” Laura asked softly.

  “June and little Tracy,” he mumbled. “Thought the sun shone out of Stephen's bum. Fish from t'chippie for tea because that were Stephen's favourite, this programme or that programme on t'telly because that were what Stevie liked so they liked it too.” He mimicked June Baker's slightly refined tone savagely and gave a gesture of disgust at the memory.

  “You really hated Stephen?”

  “I never wanted him here. “Tracy were my little lass till he moved in, my treasure. She loved her dad. Did Tracy. Then it were Stevie this and Stevie that.” The bitterness of that old jealousy was still raw on his pinched face and Laura realised that even if he had not been sure that the boy was guilty he would have been pleased to help convict him.

  “Tell me about Jerry Hurst then,” she said, checking to make sure that her tape-recorder was still running. This was an interview she did not want to lose.

  “He came up for a bit of a chat after Stephen had been interviewed a couple of times. He aid it'd be a right pity if he got away with it for lack of evidence. He'd seen him going out, he said, and if I said I'd come home with Kelly and found the flat empty just after, then that would clinch it.”

  “And it did?”

  “Aye. When I told them that, they arrested him straight off,” Miller said. “Good bloody riddance, as far as I was concerned. I told them that an'all.”

  “But it was a lie? You didn't find the flat empty when you said you did, when Stephen claimed he was here watching television.” Miller shook his head.

  “I didn't come back till much later,” he said. “But so what? I knew he'd done it. If he'd got away with it I'd have killed him an
y road.” Laura looked at the slight grey figure and wondered at the curdled emotions which had soured within for so long, reducing Miller to a husk who had found not an ounce of affection for the daughter who was left.

  “You were never tempted to tell the truth later? At the trial? You stuck with that story right to the bitter end?”

  “Jerry made sure of that,” he said. “I were drawing benefit while June were working. He threatened to shop me to the Social if I let him down.”

  “So the two of you had Stephen put away?”

  Miller nodded, his eyes shifting round the room, looking anywhere but at Laura, who could not keep the contempt from her voice.

  “And now?” she said at length. “What do you think now that there's been another murder that looks so similar?”

  “I don't know, do I?” Miller shouted angrily. “It's not my bloody fault. It were t'police who put Stephen away. They thought he's done it all right. That inspector Huddleston thought he'd done it. And the jury. It weren't just what I said, you know. He confessed.”

  “Will you go to the police now and tell them the truth?” she asked, glancing at the tape still turning slowly in the recorder so that he would have no doubt that if he did not, she would.

  “Aye, all right,” he muttered reluctantly.

  “Doesn't it bother you that you've wrecked that boy's life?” she asked angrily. Miller did not reply and she switched off her tape-recorder in disgust, put it in her bag and got up to leave. As they moved to the door of the living room she heard the front door slam.

  “I thought she were out,” Miller said, and Laura wondered if Kelly had been listening at the door and if so for how long. Miller, she thought, had lost not one daughter buttwo, the second loss following inevitably on the first as the bitterness of Tracy's death corroded her father's soul. She suddenly felt suffocate by the stale air of the cramped flat and moved quickly to the front door.