The Missing And The Dead: A tense crime thriller with a shocking twist

by J. F. Burgess

  'Do you still have this note?' Blake probed.

  Bates shook his head solemnly, 'No. My wife threw it out with some old business papers years ago.'

  'Hmm. How very unfortunate. 'Blake turned to the lawyer, 'Given everything we have so far, we'll be searching Mr Bates’ property imminently, including his laptop and internet browsing history. And we'll be looking into this blackmail allegation, which, as there's no evidence, I'm inclined to think is a smoke-screen.'

  The lawyer retorted, 'You should be hauling Johnny Wilder in. The man’s a serious criminal, and the Lombardi woman isn't snow white, either. My client tells me she helped run Wilder’s prostitution racket.’

  'Is that true about Valletta Lombardi, Clifford? For the tape, Clifford Bates has nodded in agreement,' Blake said. 'Can you provide information on Valletta Lombardi's involvement in Lenny Wilder's alleged prostitution racket, Clifford?'

  Bates’ lawyer tipped his head in confirmation.

  With Lenny dead and Johnny out of the picture, Bates seemed to drop his guard, 'The Lombardi woman was running about with all sorts of dodgy blokes. She used to bring them in the café, with young girls in tow looking like lost sheep. I caught her dealing drugs on a few occasions and tried to ban her, but Lenny Wilder threatened me.’

  Bates’ eyes returned to his lawyer, 'He said he'd burn my café down. I couldn't take the risk.'

  'Did you report it to the police?' Blake asked.

  'No. The local bobby seemed reluctant to do anything against the Wilders. I think he was frightened of them; that, or they were buying him a drink or two, if you know what I mean?'

  'You think the Wilders had a copper on their payroll?'

  Realising he may have opened a can of worms, Bates shrugged, 'I don't know. It was all such a long time ago.'

  Blake continued, 'So Valletta Lombardi kept using your café?'

  'Yeah. I couldn't stop her. She seemed to curb the dealing, though.'

  'Maybe Lenny had a word with her, after all?' Blake said.

  'Probably. Johnny Wilder came in with Valletta Lombardi a few days after his brother threatened me. He wanted a word in private. We went into the kitchen and he rammed his fist into my stomach to make sure I got the message.'

  'Were there any witnesses?'

  'No. It was my wife’s day off.'

  'Why haven't you told us any of this before? It would have saved a ton of police man hours, Mr Bates.'

  'I was scared. Johnny might come after me.'

  'The man’s over seventy.'

  'Once a nutter, always a nutter,' Bates said.

  'Unfortunately, Johnny Wilder has gone to ground. As soon as we get hold of him, he'll be questioned about his brother’s threats and your blackmail allegation,' Murphy reassured him.

  A look of sheer horror appeared on the old man's face. The two detectives knew that look all too well. He was definitely hiding something, and they intended to keep him in custody until they'd found out what it was.

  CHAPTER 26

  Considering Clifford Bates lived on his own, his bungalow was spotless, like it had recently been given a deep clean. The timing may have been a coincidence, but Blake's gut was telling him otherwise. When they first interviewed him in connection with Lenny Wilder, he’d seemed very helpful: in hindsight, too obliging. He'd given them the victims who'd suffered at Wilder’s brutal hand. It was all a little too convenient, almost as if he was intentionally trying to mislead them. Whatever the case, he hoped Bates’ bungalow might give up some of his dark secrets.

  'In here, Boss,' PC Davies shouted.

  'What have you got?'

  'A set of three keys, not suspicious on their own, but they were hidden under a loose floorboard in his wardrobe, along with this,' Davies passed over what appeared to be a business card.

  Blake held it up and read the faded blue text: Newfield. There was also a phone number. ‘The only reason anyone would hide this is to stop it getting into the wrong hands. It will be interesting to see what the keys are to?'

  'A secret stash of indecent images of kids may be, given the allegation of propositioning a minor?'

  'Sadly, I think you could be right.’ Blake said, slipping the card into an evidence bag. He fished his phone from his coat pocket and dialled the number on the card. 'Dead as a dodo. Can't say I'm surprised. Give me a shout if anything else turns up.'

  He left Davies to it in the bedroom.

  The living room was a hive of activity with two officers carefully going through the large G-Plan shelving unit covering the wall behind the sofa. They'd cleared it of several collectible Royal Doulton figures, and emptied the contents of each cupboard onto the mahogany dining table. The furniture clashed, appearing to come from different decades of the last seventy years. Blake padded over the deep floral carpet to the lead CSI, 'Anything?'

  'Just the kind of thing we'd expect to find, really: old photos, knick-knacks and the usual crap people accumulate over the years,' Jeff Foxhall said.

  'PC Davies found these keys hidden under a floorboard, so keep an eye out for locked boxes, cupboards or hidden safes?'

  ****

  Outside, two other CSIs were processing the garage and the shed. Blake stepped out of the kitchen door and made his way over to the shed. A CSI had carefully removed the contents and laid them out on the neatly manicured lawn for closer scrutiny.

  'Anything?'

  'Afraid not, although the contents of that box look interesting,' the CSI said, removing his hood.

  'In what way?' Blake asked.

  'I've only glanced at it, but I think there's some of those 8mm film reels, the kind that fit into older hand-held cine-cameras from the 1970s.’

  'Any sign of the camera? Blake asked.

  'No, but we've got a machine at the lab that will play the films.’

  Blake scanned the boxes. 'What are those?’ He pointed to what looked like older-woman clothes neatly piled in one of the boxes: most likely Bates’ wife’s. The man probably couldn't bear to part with them. A sentiment he knew all too well. It had taken him four years to muster up the strength to empty his wife's wardrobe and bag her clothes up for charity. Just the thought of loading his car boot saddened him.

  ‘Something in the pocket of this blouse,' the CSI said, passing over the pink garment.

  Blake knelt beside him to take a closer look, 'An elderly lady wouldn't wear that,' he said, inserting his pen and lifting out a silver chain necklace with an enamel butterfly pendant. The butterfly had golden-brown wings, with a black spot at each wing tip containing two tiny white dots.

  'Does your suspect have any daughters?' the CSI asked.

  'Just one.'

  'Could this be hers?’

  'It’s possible. I'll have to speak to her.'

  They exchanged a knowing look.

  'It could be a trophy, though?' the CSI said.

  'Exactly. Keep digging, and let me know immediately if you find anything else suspicious,' Blake said, sliding the necklace into a clear evidence bag. Seemed Clifford Bates had questions to answer. He made his way back across the lawn toward the bungalow.

  CHAPTER 27

  Seeing Clifford Bates’ wife’s clothes laid out on the lawn had brought back painful memories for Blake. So much so, he felt compelled to visit Trudy’s and Dylan’s graveside en route to the forensics lab. The first couple of years after his wife and son were killed, he’d visited once a week. But, as time passed, he preferred to take long canal walks and reflect upon the happy times they'd spent together. Even now his mind had reached the acceptance stage of grief, a song on the radio, or a place they'd visited together, could still catch him unawares, and then emotional pain would consume him. Thankfully, those dark episodes had become less frequent, but today was one of those days.

  Tears welling in his eyes, he stood over their headstone, sombrely reflecting on how much he missed them. Dylan would have been a young man now.

  In desperate need of distraction, Blake fished his phone from his poc
ket and checked his messages. Jeff Foxhall had called and followed up with a text. He'd arrived back at the lab sooner than anticipated and was asking Blake to join him to assess the 8mm films.

  Dabbing his eyes with a crumpled tissue from his coat, Blake took a doleful last glance at the headstone, and walked back to his car. He looked forward to seeing Isabel that evening. She'd inherited Trudy's kind and compassionate personality, and the physical resemblance was striking.

  CHAPTER 28

  'God, turn it off, Jeff’, Blake said, glaring at the wide projector screen in a darkened room at the forensics lab. ‘I've seen enough of that sick bastard’s naked back to last a lifetime.'

  He stared at the still image of a burly white male. They'd put him in his early thirties, with long sideburns, neatly cropped brown hair shaved tight to his neckline, and no visible body hair. He was looming menacingly over the petrified naked frame of a young girl.

  'It's bloody awful,’ Jeff Foxhall said.

  Blake shook his head in utter disgust, 'It's alleged Clifford Bates propositioned a fourteen-year-old girl called Lorna Atwood back in 1978. She’s been missing ever since.'

  'And you think that could be her?'

  'It’s possible, but you know the statistics on Mispers.'

  Foxhall nodded, 'Most likely dead. I'm a bit of geek when it comes to old-school tech. Very few people had home movie cameras in the seventies. Kodak only made them available around 1965 and they were really expensive. Super 8mm film, they called it, an amateur format. It was replaced by standard 8mm format and then video in the late 1970s. Given these are smaller reels, it safe to say they were done on an earlier camera: sixty metre reels, maybe fifteen minutes of footage. We use a company who can enhance them and then transfer to a digital format ready for a court case.'

  'If Clifford Bates continues to withhold evidence, how the hell are we going to identify the paedo on the film? Without a frontal shot of his face? I mean, he's a similar height and build to Bates, but this is over forty years old, it could be anyone.'

  'We found family photos, but there weren't any of Bates until he was in his sixties: nothing from the 1970s.’

  'Really?'

  'Yeah, it’s very odd. It's going to be challenging to prove it’s him,' Foxhall acknowledged.

  'You’re not kidding. Seems to me like he's tried to erase his younger self, as if he never existed before retirement. The only reason I can think why he'd do that is to hide something seriously incriminating,' Blake said.

  'Maybe he can't bear to look at photos of him and his wife together anymore, because they upset him. My dad was like that after my mum passed away. It killed him to see them both in happier times. Shit, sorry, Tom.' Foxhall said, realising he may have stirred up painful memories of Blake's wife and son.

  'It’s OK.' Blake knew that deep sense of pain all too well, but his cemetery visit had provided some comfort. 'Sorry to hear your dad took it so badly. I lost both my parents when I was in my thirties. You never forget them, it’s tough. But all a bit too convenient in this instance, don't you think?'

  'Certainly looks that way.'

  Blake sighed with disappointment, 'It’s not like we can look online through social media or anything. That's the problem with cold cases. People’s imprints pre-internet days are far harder to trace. Criminals could get away with so much back then.'

  'This is a probably a stupid question, but is there any way of identifying the property where this abuse took place? To me, it looks like separate locations. I mean the height of the ceiling in the first film is higher than that in the second one?' Foxhall said.

  'Great spot! I think you're right. Although I'm not sure how we'd go about it?'

  'I'll wind the second reel back a bit. It could be my mind playing tricks on me, but I think I noticed something strange toward the end: like the image of a blurred building ? Maybe the film has been recorded over at some point?’

  'I never saw that.'

  'It was a nano-second; almost subliminal, if that makes sense.'

  'OK, rewind it. Let’s take a look,' Blake said, in earnest.

  They both watched carefully.

  'There!’ Foxhall hit the stop switch like it was the winner button on a slot machine.

  They both peered at the transparent image of a house frontage. The pitched roof gable at the front had some kind of decorative clay cast inset below it.

  'Looks like a woman’s head set in a flower to me,' Blake said, his face about three inches away from the projection screen.

  'If we can identify when those types of houses were built, we may be able to narrow it down to an area, or even to the house these dreadful videos were filmed at?' Foxhall said.

  'I agree. The owner of these films wouldn’t want them distributed, so probably recorded over them many times to keep the number of reels down. It’s a leap, but maybe he owned the house? There’s still a good few Victorian and Edwardian properties left in Stoke-on-Trent, and I know just the man who can help us: a local historian, Dougy Taylor. He helped us on case a few years ago. I'll give him a call when I get back the station. Bloody brilliant spot that, Jeff!'

  'Glad I could help. This is very dark stuff.'

  'The worst part is, I don't think comparing our photos of the girl with these films will be accurate enough. I’m going to have to show this vile footage to Lorna Atwood's parents. Only a mother truly knows her own daughter. No doubt it will destroy them.' Blake shuddered at the mere thought of it.

  CHAPTER 29

  Back at the station, Blake called Dougy Taylor, but couldn't get hold of him. Instead, he sent a text and attached a blurry picture of the house frontage he'd taken off the projector screen, emphasising the importance. The eccentric historian was probably out and about, in the field as he called it, taking pics and following up on the research for his new book Stoke: The City That Britain Forgot.

  ****

  DS Brogan and PC Emerson had arrested Valletta Lombardi and stuck her in Interview Room Two. Blake asked Emerson to sit in, to gain first-hand experience of CID interview techniques.

  'Why have you arrested me? I've already told you everything I know about the Wilder brothers.' Her smile from their previous informal chat was now replaced with a frown of annoyance.

  'Miss Lombardi, that's not the truth, is it? In fact, we've spoken to a witness who knew you back in the late seventies and they've informed us you were involved in child grooming and prostitution.’

  She'd only been told her arrest was for providing false evidence in their previous meeting, and Blake wanted her unsettled from the off.

  'I don't know who you've been talking to, but that's slander: they're lying. I had some tough times in my early twenties, issues with drugs. And I was involved with some bad people, but I swear, I had nothing to do with anything so disgusting.' she said, furious at the allegation.

  'I'm trying to establish why this informant would say that if it wasn't true. Were you involved in prostitution or not, Miss Lombardi?' Blake wanted her to confess for the tape.

  Emerson's face flushed a little as she took notes.

  A knock on the door signalled Lombardi's legal rep had arrived. Blake stopped the tape machine momentarily as the tall thin lawyer entered the room. She tucked her pinstripe pencil skirt neatly under her, sat and quickly orientated herself.

  'Morning, Inspector Blake, PC Emerson. Can't say as I'm happy you've begun questioning my client without my presence.'

  'If this was a straightforward interview, regarding a minor crime, I'd have to agree, but we're investigating a murder, and there are links to the disappearance of a fourteen-year-old girl. A suspect we have in custody has disclosed that Miss Lombardi was possibly involved in these crimes.’

  Valletta Lombardi looked mortified, 'Missing girl! I only know about Lenny Wilder! What's going on?' she protested.

  The lawyer peered sternly over the rim of her glasses at Blake, 'What exactly is the allegation, Inspector?'

  'I can't go into too much detai
l because the suspect has yet to be formally charged. However, I can tell you we have forensic evidence linking him to involvement in the abuse and disappearance of teenager, Lorna Atwood, in 1978. That girl was forced into having sex with older men, and your client is accused of helping a paedophile ring facilitate this abuse.'

  Upon hearing the full extent of the allegation, Valletta Lombardi broke down and began to sob.

  'I'd like to request a comfort break, please. As you can see Miss Lombardi is far too upset at present to continue.'

  'You've got fifteen minutes,' Blake conceded.

  ****

  Afterwards, a more composed Valletta Lombardi returned to the interview room. Whatever her lawyer had said seemed to have calmed her down.

  Blake looked directly at Lombardi, 'OK, I'd like to know more about what happened in May 1978. This is your chance to get your side of the story across regarding your relationship with the missing girl, Lorna Atwood. The suspect we have in custody will have to remain anonymous for now. Although, I can tell you he was a local business man back in 1978, and we're convinced he had links with the Wilder brothers.'

  Lombardi's eyes widened and her body stiffened. 'Lorna hung around The Golden Nugget and the café on the precinct. She said she'd left school just before her sixteenth birthday. I warned her about hanging around the arcade, but she didn't listen. It was all short skirts and platforms back then. Girls like her always looked much older. She was flattered by the attention from older men.'

  'She was fourteen; still a child, Miss Lombardi.'

  'My head was so mashed on drugs I couldn't tell. That's the truth.'

  'Did you introduce her to the Wilder brothers?'