by Nick Oldham
Unfortunately, the move would mean she wouldn’t get the chance to indulge in her ‘pet project’, as Allbridge had teased her.
Although missing persons cases were not really the remit of the CID unless they were related to serious offences, they were something that was part of the very fabric of Blackpool. Hundreds of people, mainly kids, surged into the resort every year having gone missing from their homes right across the UK. Even local kids could easily disappear into the heaving morass that was Blackpool, where anyone could get lost and become just another face among millions.
Most eventually turned up. Some unscathed, others having suffered horrific abuse that was often never uncovered; there were others who never, ever surfaced again. Those who might have been spotted in the resort but were never caught and never to be seen again, plunging their relatives into a lifetime of angst. Blackpool, despite its bright lights, had a very dark underbelly that few ever saw: organized crime that included the drugs trade and prostitution, yes, but also the ability to suck in the unwary, usually spit them out, but occasionally not.
Blackstone felt some responsibility for the children.
It was just ‘a thing’ – something she found difficult to explain – but she knew that if she could intervene and do something good for youngsters who were wayward and lost (in so many ways), and needed help, even if they didn’t see it that way, it was better than nothing.
So over her time as a detective sergeant (she had been promoted in from Lancaster) at Blackpool, she had made it a bit of a mission during any downtime she might have (which wasn’t much, admittedly) to get to know the ‘community’ of the Golden Mile, where the kids gravitated to, and try to make a difference.
Every day she checked missing-from-home reports and, if possible, spent a little time on foot.
Over the course of several months, Blackstone became as familiar a face on the Golden Mile as the local foot patrol officers and PCSOs. She got to know business people – shady and legit – stall holders, balloon sellers even; also the regular kids and the homeless, of which there were too many. She even managed to set up an old hotel undergoing renovations as a place for homeless people to get a night’s sleep out of the rain, though funding for such projects was always problematic and temporary.
That night, as she strolled through the arcades, she got a lot of nods from the people she knew, plus lots of cautious glances from the local children who knew she was a cop – cautious because although she was there mainly for welfare, she didn’t tolerate lawbreakers. In her ‘mooches’, she had ended up with some very good prisoners all under the age of fifteen.
She stopped to chat with a ‘regular’ homeless guy and then a couple of local teenagers she’d previously locked up for ‘rolling’ a drunk. They were obviously on the prowl again, so she gave them the hard word and the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture.
They slunk off into the night like scalded cats.
There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary going on, although Blackstone knew that what she was seeing on her stroll was just the tip of the iceberg. She began to head back to the police station, wanting to be there when the Glasgow guy was charged with grievous bodily harm and his bail refused. She was anticipating seeing the expression on his face and knew that if she got everything right, he wouldn’t be seeing the outside of a cell for a long time.
She was almost back at the station, turning off the prom on to New Bonny Street by the Coral Island amusement complex, when one of the supervisors rushed out, looking all around her until her eyes locked on Blackstone who had spotted the young woman, seen she was stressed and, easily guided by her finely tuned cop radar, was already walking urgently towards her. Blackstone knew the woman – her name was Judith.
‘Debbie, I need your help,’ she cried in a panic. ‘There’s been an abduction or a kidnapping or something not good … I don’t know.’
She quickly led Blackstone into the arcade and to an office at the back in which a young girl, maybe twelve years old, sat in a chair with her head bowed over, long, straggly hair hanging down. Another member of staff was standing close by, keeping an eye on her.
The girl looked up as the two women entered. Tears and snot were smeared down her face. Blackstone immediately noticed the almost non-existent skirt, cut-off T-shirt exposing her thin white belly and the myriad of self-inflicted tattoos on her arms.
Even before knowing anything else, she would have laid bets that the girl was a runaway.
‘Hi, I’m Detective Sergeant Blackstone from Blackpool police station. What’s happened, love?’ Blackstone bounced on to her haunches to bring her down to eye level. Tenderly, she tucked back the strands of the girl’s unkempt hair that were plastered all over her face in the slime. It looked as if it hadn’t been washed for days.
‘My mate, my mate,’ she babbled. ‘They got her, she’s been picked up, dragged off … three white guys in a van.’ She was close to hyperventilation, sucking in air.
‘OK, just try and keep calm, and tell me slowly what happened,’ Blackstone said in her best soothing voice. She was good at this.
‘No!’ The girl grabbed Blackstone’s arm fiercely. ‘You need to find her now. They’re gonna rape her.’
‘How d’you know that?’
‘I do, cos I do … cos …’ Her voice began to falter. ‘Cos we’ve been wi’ ’em and we thought they were OK, but then they started messing and we did a runner.’
‘When was this?’
‘Yesterday … an’ we seen ’em today … fuckin’ prowlin’ in their van an’ they spotted us and called us over an’ chatted to us through t’window and said they were sorry, but then the side door opened an’ the third guy tried to drag us both in, but I got free an’ ran like fuck! They drove off wi’ Kelly. She were screamin’, like, an’ I just ran for me life, in here, an’ I was screamin’ too.’
‘OK – what’s your name, love?’
‘Ruby Weatherall.’
‘And where did this happen?’
‘Just … just out there.’ She pointed in the direction of New Bonny Street.
‘Which way?’
‘T’wards town.’
‘Right … you think you’d know the van again?’
‘Maybe … it were small an’ black an’ had a sliding door,’ Ruby said.
Blackstone glanced at the Coral Island employee. ‘I’ll take it from here, thanks, Judith. Well done.’
‘No problem.’
Blackstone focused on Ruby. ‘Right, what we’re going to do is this, love: we’re going to the police station, which is just around the corner, we’re going to jump into my car and then we’re going to comb the streets and see if we can spot the van and Kelly, and I’ll get all the other police officers out there to do the same thing, OK?’
Ruby nodded.
‘We jog to the cop shop, OK? And you keep talking to me all the time, yeah?’
Ruby nodded again.
Blackstone said, ‘Let’s go. Time matters.’
Blackstone was in her car – a dull ten-year-old Ford Focus – within minutes, Ruby sitting alongside, slowly scouring the streets while pumping the girl for information – anything that would help to find her friend. At the same time she had an ear to the radio, listening as patrols were deployed around the resort based on her information, so she was concentrating on several things at once.
‘Where are you from, Ruby?’
‘Huddersfield.’
‘I take it you’re missing from home?’
‘Suppose I am,’ she said sullenly.
‘DS Blackstone from Inspector Clarke, receiving?’
‘Go ahead, boss.’
‘Are you thinking this is genuine?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Roger that.’
‘How long have you been in Blackpool?’
‘Uh, two weeks, I guess.’
‘Where have you been staying?’
No response from Ruby.
‘I asked where you’ve
been staying.’
‘Uh … wi’ them guys.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Dunno … just first names is all I know … David an’ someone else.’
‘What the hell were you thinking?’
She shrugged, obviously feeling under pressure.
Blackstone had so many questions. ‘Did they molest you, touch you?’
‘Not at first.’
‘So what happened first, love?’ Blackstone was finding it hard to be too empathetic at that moment.
‘They had us nicking an’ dropping packages off, like.’
‘Nicking what?’
‘Y’know – shoplifting.’
‘Shoplifting?’
‘Yeah … designer goods … and they looked after us.’
‘What sort of goods?’
‘Perfume ’n’ stuff … trainers, dresses, like … but not supermarket shit if you know what I mean? At first it were good. They gave us booze and we ’ad fun. Then it got creepy. Hands up me skirt, on me cunt, y’know?’
Blackstone shivered at the word. Its usage had become much more common of late, especially on social media, but it didn’t mean she liked it. In her eyes, it would never be an acceptable word to bandy about.
‘Where did you stay with these people, Ruby?’
‘Fuck should I know? No idea where I even am, ’cept in Blackpool … but if I see the place, I might recognize it … and the van.’
‘Describe the van again.’
‘Just a small black van with a sliding door … like a painter might have … there were buckets in it.’
‘And the house you stayed in? Where was it? What was it like?’
‘Wasn’t a house … it were like a hotel – but being done up. A fuckin’ wreck of a place.’
‘Being refurbished, you mean?’
Ruby shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘Suppose.’
Every available patrol was working the streets now, plus a static traffic car on a checkpoint on the M55, the main artery into and out of Blackpool.
‘Inspector Clarke to DS Blackstone, receiving?’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Your location and the description of the suspect vehicle again, please.’
‘Currently Talbot Square … and it’s a small black van, make unknown, registration unknown, with a sliding side door, like a work van of some sort. Two white males in the front, a third white male, probably out of sight in the back of the van. Best I can do.’
Then Clarke said, ‘Urgent – I’m following a similar vehicle, Church Street towards Devonshire Square … three vehicles between me and it, which I’m struggling to pass because I’m in my own car, no blues and twos.’
Comms cut in: ‘Patrols to make.’
Three mobiles piped up, responding from different locations.
Then: ‘Inspector Clarke to patrols, vehicle has run a red light across Whitegate Drive … I’m stuck in traffic both ways.’
‘They seem to be going out of town, if that’s the van,’ Blackstone said to Ruby. The temptation was to make that way herself – the conditioning of a cop: rush to everything. But she held back. Plenty of patrols were on their way now, and if it wasn’t the right van, then valuable time would be wasted on a wild goose chase. She stayed cruising streets just off the town centre, that maze between Talbot Road and Warbreck Road in the North Shore area, continually asking questions of this witness and possibly victim, who seemed to be more and more reluctant to divulge information as time went by.
‘Recognize this street?’ Blackstone asked.
‘They’re all the same.’
‘But do you think it could be around here? The hotel that’s being refurbished?’
‘Maybe …’
Blackstone was under no illusions. Many of the streets behind the prom had a similar look and were a maze, and at any one time there could be twenty hotels in different stages of being done up. Needle/haystack came to mind. Under her breath, she swore with frustration.
She listened to the voices of patrols as they converged on the area where Inspector Clarke had seen the van fitting the description. She turned on to Dickinson Road, down to Gynn Square roundabout. She was intending to loop around and head back towards the town when Ruby suddenly sat upright and pointed north along Queen’s Promenade.
‘It might be up there!’ she said excitedly.
Blackstone didn’t question it but circumnavigated the roundabout and kept going north towards Bispham. The road inclined upwards. On the left were cliffs overlooking the beach; on the right, a string of hotels of varying sizes.
‘Could be one of these,’ she said to Blackstone, leaning across to get a look, making the detective wince at the young girl’s body odour. She needed a bloody good shower.
Blackstone slowed to a crawl. Ruby peered across.
Then: ‘That one! I’m sure it is.’
It was a very large hotel right on the front at the junction of Knowle Avenue, surrounded by a high metal fence of the type used to secure building sites. Blackstone slewed across the road and stopped.
Indeed, it was a hotel undergoing refurbishment.
‘How did you get in and out?’
‘Round the back, all the time. That’s why I was confused, I think. Only saw this side of it the once.’
‘Is there a gap in the fencing at the back?’
Ruby nodded.
Blackstone turned into Knowle Avenue and stopped. The fencing around the hotel continued here and then around the back of the premises.
‘You stay here, OK? Do not move.’
‘What’re you doing?’
‘Going for a gander.’
TWELVE
2020
‘This one,’ Blackstone said to Henry Christie. She pointed across the road to the Park Lane Hotel. Henry shot across into the large car park at the front of the hotel, which was deserted. Even from the car they could see Closed signs and various COVID notices on the doors and windows of the premises.
‘This is such a shame,’ Henry said, feeling empathy with all hotel owners. ‘Looks like a pretty nice hotel, actually.’
He saw Blackstone shiver. ‘Didn’t look like this the last time I was here,’ she said and wrapped her arms around her as if she was cuddling herself.
‘Never been back, ever?’ Henry asked.
She shook her head.
‘Let’s go see, eh … talk me through it.’
The Park Lane Hotel, back then known as the Belmont, had been refurbished to a high standard, Blackstone noted, as, both masked, she and Henry walked up the steps from his car to the front door and rang the bell. A conservatory ran the full length of the front of the building, an ideal place to sit, eat and watch life go by, but now all the cane chairs and tables were stacked high.
‘It was just a shell,’ she said to Henry. ‘Virtually completely gutted. I left the girl, Ruby, in my car with strict instructions to stay put and walked down the alley behind the hotel with my penlight torch, like the little girl I was. I made my way along the fence which was, I dunno, maybe eight feet high, made of mesh but backed with metal plates so you couldn’t really see through, other than where the panels interlinked each other. Then I found two of the panels weren’t connected or chained, so I pushed my way through into the back yard of the hotel. Loads of building materials stacked up, bricks, all sorts of shit. A small JCB-type digger thing, concrete mixers …’
She stopped and looked at Henry, who rang the bell.
Henry said, ‘And a van?’
‘How did you …?’
‘Know? I’m just good at finishing people’s sentences.’ His ears rose as he smiled behind his face mask.
Despite reliving a terrifying past, Blackstone smiled too, but made sure her ears didn’t move so as not to give her away. Smiling wasn’t something she did easily these days.
‘Yeah, a van …’
‘We were eighty per cent booked up,’ the hotel proprietor said as he led them through the hotel. He was called Risdon,
late fifties, and came across as very avuncular, just the right kind of person to be running a hotel – not, Henry fleetingly thought, like me. Henry had never seen himself as having the right sort of personality to run The Tawny Owl. Too grumpy, too short-tempered by half. His secret ambition might have been to marry a landlady and that would have suited him fine. Instead, he ended up running the place. ‘This was to be our first season since the refurbishment. Took the best part of four years to do because when I bought the place, the previous owners had let it rot to ruin, basically. If we don’t open up very soon, I’m going to go to the wall,’ Risdon finished.
‘It’s been a tough year, no doubt,’ Henry commiserated. ‘It’s been … What’s that thing everybody now says?’
‘Unprecedented,’ Blackstone said with a wink, finishing his sentence.
‘Yeah – unprecedented,’ Risdon said, ushering them through a foyer and up a flight of steps to a landing, through a set of fire doors to emerge at a long, first-floor corridor, stretching the whole length of the hotel, off which were bedrooms front and rear. It was nicely painted in beige with cheap, pleasant art on the walls. ‘What’s your interest?’ he asked.
‘Sometime during the refurbishment, a police officer stumbled across something happening in the hotel,’ Henry explained, keeping it simple by adding, ‘Intruders.’
‘Oh, right … I think there were a few.’
‘The officer was assaulted, the intruder escaped. It’s a while ago, but something’s come up and we’re just doing some follow-up enquiries.’ Henry kept it vague.
Risdon looked puzzled. ‘I wonder why I don’t know anything about it. When exactly was it?’
Henry looked at Blackstone, who reeled off the date. Risdon made some mental calculations. ‘Ahh … the penny drops … that was in the very early days of the refurb. I was still running my hotel up in Cartmel and I left the gutting of the place and other basic stuff like plumbing and electrics to my builder, who did a great job, I have to say. I only came down here after all that was done.’
‘Who was your builder?’ Henry asked.
‘Hindle’s. Really good they were.’
‘Blackpool based?’
‘Yeah – quite an old established company.’
