A Carriage of Misjustice

by Charlie Cochrane

  “Before our time. You’ll have noticed that Inspector Warner was the lead on those cases,” Sally said. “He’s retired, but I know Sergeant Harper, who was a constable on the team back then. He’s in traffic division now and he could tell you about it.”

  Callum cut in. “What he’ll say is that Warner was convinced the two lads who nicked the cars caused the accident. Harper told me that himself when I’d recently started here. Warner’s attitude was that we were better to have a name in the frame and fail to convict them through lack of evidence than have no name at all.”

  “That accords with what I’ve seen for myself,” Robin said. “No wonder people have strong feelings about it. I’m not convinced Warner got it right. The carjackers said they didn’t hit Jamie, and for once I’m inclined to believe them. One of them put his hand up to nicking Osment’s car but the other didn’t, so God alone knows what was going on there. An attack of conscience by the first or deflecting attention from something else?”

  “I’ve got an idea, sir. It’s slightly left field, but . . .” Sally shrugged and watched Robin hopefully.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “It’s based on Osment having been the driver at the accident and why—in that case—he’d bring attention to himself with the vandalism and whatever. He goes home from the match with Colin Cooper, then immediately takes his own car back to the club, maybe to follow Dave. It would be in character for Osment to think Dave might have been meeting Melanie.” Sally, who’d been rushing through her words, took a breath. “When Osment gets to the club, Dave’s already gone, so he dashes back home again, in a mood. But rather than his hitting Jamie because of his own dangerous driving, the accident’s partially caused by Jamie himself. Mending his bike in the road rather than on the verge but not showing a light so he can’t be seen until it’s too late.”

  Robin remembered something he’d noted and promptly forgotten. “Pru, do you remember that Preese told us Jamie had come off his bike before because he’d been on the sauce? Hold on.” He nipped back to his desk, returning with the postmortem report. “Yes. A small amount of alcohol in the system. Unlikely to have been over the limit while he was cycling, but some people go silly on half a pint. What if Jamie was less than careful that evening because the shandies he’d drunk—if they were just shandies—had gone to his head?” He stopped. “Sorry, Sally. I’m stealing your thunder, here.”

  “You’re all right, sir. Glad to hear you don’t think this is all entirely stupid.” She gave the others a glare, clearly daring them to challenge her. “I know that road and it’s pitch-black on a moonless night. If a cyclist who’d stopped wasn’t showing enough light while he was mending his bike, a car could be on him in a flash. Imagine Osment happens to hit Jamie, then panics and leaves the scene. Afterwards everyone’s elevating the lad to an iconic status and that hacks Osment off because he knows the truth.”

  “Okay, in that case, why didn’t he share that truth with other people rather than making a nuisance of himself?” Pru asked.

  “And risk being banged up? He’d have faked the theft and torching of his own car so that all would have appeared highly suspicious. Then, when the inquest revealed that Jamie potentially could have survived if he’d had earlier medical intervention, Osment must have realised he would have been crucified, irrespective of who caused the accident. Who’d have had any sympathy with Osment in that case?”

  The team took in Sally’s theory without ridiculing the notion. It pretty well stacked up with what little evidence they had, but was it the correct picture for the jigsaw pieces to form?

  Callum raised his hand, like one of Adam’s year six pupils might. “Was Joe playing in that game against Tuckton? Has anybody considered if he caused the hit-and-run? Whether it wasn’t so much that he was upset about Jamie’s death but so racked with guilt afterwards that he lashed out at his boyfriend?”

  “I suppose that’s possible, but it’s stretching credulity,” Pru commented. “He’s a trained first aider, and he had a soft spot for Jamie. Wouldn’t he have been the last person to simply drive off?”

  “What if he didn’t know it was Jamie he’d hit until afterwards? Just thought he’d struck a deer or a large dog? Or maybe he knew he’d hit a person and simply panicked?” Callum sounded less and less convinced by his own idea.

  “We can’t discount anything,” Robin said, even though he’d privately discounted this theory. Time for him to share his thoughts. “When I looked through that stuff this morning, I came away with one impression, which I’ve already stated. There was something else that nagged at me, though. What if Osment didn’t run Jamie over, but when the rumour mill started to name him for the crime, he made it his business to find out who did it? And what if he did run the culprit to ground?”

  “When the police couldn’t?” Laurence rolled his eyes incredulously.

  “I don’t think we’re infallible. Do you?” When no answer came, Robin continued. “It’s possible he’s always known who did it. Maybe he witnessed it.”

  Pru almost bounced off the desk where she’d been perched. “Colin Cooper?”

  “Maybe. We shouldn’t confine ourselves to Cooper, though. Osment was a passenger in the car, so he might have seen or heard things Cooper didn’t if he was concentrating on driving. A vehicle ahead of them or pulled in at the side of the road.” He turned to Callum. “Did you investigate Osment’s financial affairs?”

  “Yep, and there’s nothing odd there in terms of incomings or outgoings. If you’re wondering if he was blackmailing the person who killed Jamie, then the money involved has gone somewhere we’ve yet to trace it.”

  “Maybe he’d only recently attempted blackmail and it hadn’t paid dividends yet,” Pru pointed out. “He might have been concerned about losing his job if the company he worked for was reorganising the staffing structure. Perhaps he fancied a new source of income to tide him over. As a result of which, the victim turned the tables and killed him.”

  “This would all tend to rule out Dave as the hit-and-run driver, I’d suggest,” Robin said. “Osment would have been crowing it from the rooftops, surely? Even if he couldn’t prove Dave’s guilt, it would have blackened the bloke’s name. We need to talk to Melanie about this. If he had a suspicion or a lingering resentment, you’d have thought she’d know about it.”

  But she didn’t.

  Robin had a long telephone call with her, which started spikily, Melanie going off on a rant, which finished with, “Why do you policemen have such dirty minds? Why can’t my friendship with Dave be simply that? A friendship.”

  Had Dave been in touch with her since they interviewed him? Time to cool her down. “Mrs. Osment, you’re an intelligent woman. You know we have a duty towards the victim to explore anything that might be relevant to his death. Don’t you want us to find the killer as soon as possible?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And don’t you want us to ensure that we’re being told the truth and not believe any old gossip?”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose so. Sorry,” she added, grudgingly.

  That led neatly into the other rumours circulating in the case. “People are saying that Nick was the driver when a lad called Jamie Weatherell was killed in a hit-and-run some years back.”

  The rumours clearly came as no surprise. “I bet that bloody coach at the rugby club, what’s his name—Rhys, something Welsh—told you that. He needs to keep his gob shut. That’s slander.”

  Robin didn’t want to argue the case about whether you could slander a dead person. He’d come across the question before and still didn’t know the answer.

  “He’s suspicious because the car was stolen that same night.” He’d narrowly avoided the words allegedly stolen. “What do you know about that?”

  “That Nick was a bloody idiot. He was always leaving stuff on view, inviting trouble. Bags, his jacket, the satnav. He’d got away with it in the past and even though I nagged him until I was blue in the face, he thought he
’d always get away with it. I could have killed him—” She gasped. “You know I didn’t mean that. Although I could have brained him there and then when I came home on the Sunday to find the car gone and us having to use public transport or rely on lifts to get in and out of work. We used to travel together and I’d drop him off and pick him up.”

  “So, if Nick wasn’t the hit-and-run driver, did he know who was? Or suspect who was? Hello?” Robin thought the mobile signal might have gone down—like it used to mysteriously disappear around Lindenshaw school—but Melanie eventually replied.

  “Sorry, you caught me on the raw. Yes, he did suspect, but he wouldn’t tell me who it was. I wish he had now. I’m guessing you think that driver might have had something to do with Nick’s murder.”

  “We need to consider it.” Although if Melanie hadn’t a clue who Nick suspected and it turned out not to be Colin Cooper, what chance had they of following the line through? “Is it possible he wouldn’t tell you because it was somebody close to home? Somebody you both knew, perhaps.”

  “That’s possible. It’s the sort of thing he’d have done. Although if he’d suspected the driver was either Dawn or Dave, I’d have heard about it soon enough.”

  “Okay. Last question. Did he act differently in any way the last few weeks he was alive?”

  “Funny you should say that. You know—well actually you don’t know because you’ve not asked before—there was something he’d been pretty smug about the last few weeks before he died. Said whatever happened with work, we shouldn’t be worried because he had irons in the fire. I assumed he meant he had another job lined up and he didn’t want to say too much about it because it would jinx it.” She sounded choked up, again. “That was him all over. Don’t tempt fate.”

  Robin put down the phone. Was tempting fate exactly what Osment had done and was it what had got him killed?

  The afternoon seemed endless.

  Lots of routine legwork by the team and lots of frustration. Laurence had retrieved the keys the barman had lost but any fingerprints from back then were too smudged to be of use. He’d set off to do a round of the local key-cutting services with the bunch and a picture of Osment.

  People on the darts team confirmed that Osment had been smug about something but had refused to say what it was. He’d not mentioned any suspicions about Jamie Weatherell’s death, although one of the players recalled him getting worked up when a report of another hit-and-run had come onto the television in the bar where they were practicing. Osment had been moaning that the police were bloody useless and that unless somebody shopped the culprit, they’d have no chance of tracking him down. He’d finished the rant with a comment about people spreading rumours without any substance to them. All of which created the picture that Osment had felt that he was being unfairly suspected of causing Jamie’s death. Equally, it could have been a clever way of covering his guilt. Rather like those who shouted loudest about same-sex relationships being a threat to family life sometimes being the very people cheating on their wives with boyfriends of their own.

  Pru, who’d spent most of the day making a series of calls—and apparently chasing her tail most of the time given how exasperated she sounded—at last pushed the phone away and came over to Robin’s desk. “Got some news about Colin Cooper, finally.”

  “Sounds like you’ve had your work cut out, trying to run him to ground.”

  “It’s been, um, interesting. In that may you live in interesting times way.” Pru grinned. “I started with Howarth and then spoke to a series of friends of friends, but I’ve got him pinned down now. He lives in Warwick—got a job at a pharmaceutical company based there, which is how I was eventually able to make contact. He’ll see us ten o’clock tomorrow morning, although he doesn’t sound happy about it.”

  “I bet. Good work. Maybe we can go and get some lunch in Stratford afterwards. We deserve a break.”

  “That works for me, sir. Although I need to be back here by late afternoon. I’ve managed to connect up with an old schoolmate who lives the other side of Tuckton, and she’s going to show me the nightlife of Hartwood.” Pru’s delighted grin suddenly faded. “If that’s okay? You can come along if you want.”

  “And have to listen to all that my little home in the valleys stuff? Nah, you have a girls’ night out. Assuming nothing turns up in the meantime to spoil it.”

  “I’ve got my fingers crossed.”

  Robin stared at his computer screen—unseeing and wistful—when Pru returned to her desk. Shame he didn’t know anyone around here to meet up with for a beer and a curry. Another night on his lonesome-ownsome, unless one of the team suggested meeting up. He didn’t feel like making the offer, mainly because it would impose a burden on his constables, who might feel guilty about saying no.

  There must be a constructive way of using the time. Perhaps he should go out to Tuckton and then drive back along the road where Jamie had been killed. Get a feeling for the lie of the land and then let his subconscious work on what he’d seen. Maybe there was an obvious question they’d left unasked or a link left unmade.

  The Tuckton to Hartwood road, as Sally had asserted, was what Robin’s granny would have called black as your grandfather’s moustache. His car had strong headlights, but he couldn’t make out some of the twists and turns until he was almost on top of them. If the visibility that night had been dodgy—and the reports spoke of intermittent drizzle—then it might have been possible to have missed seeing somebody at the side of the road. He went up and down the stretch several times, noting anything of interest. The place where Jamie had died was itself around a bend, so if the car had come along too fast it would have been, literally, an accident waiting to happen.

  Before Robin had left the office he’d contacted Mrs. Sanderson, who still lived a couple of doors along from where the accident had happened and who said she’d be pleased to see him. Could he ring a few minutes before he arrived because she didn’t like answering the door in the evenings and did he prefer Dundee cake or almond fingers? He’d promised to ring, and said he’d be polite and eat whatever he was given and looked forward to meeting her.

  He called from a lay-by, the other side of the road, fifty yards towards Hartwood from her house. Such a location would have provided a ringside view of what happened that night. A shame that no courting couples had seen fit to make use of it or pipe up if they had: the police appeal for eye witnesses had come up with a blank. A road sign, warning of the blind bend ahead stood mockingly ahead of him, with a mirror located behind it that someone must have put in place to aid leaving their own driveway.

  Mrs. Sanderson had surely been waiting for the sight of his car turning into the drive, because the door was opened as he stepped out of the vehicle. Her house was no more than thirty yards away from the accident site and appeared, to Robin’s untutored eye, to have single glazing. That meant the occupant should easily hear what was going on outside. His granny had lived in a similar property, and when they’d installed double glazing, she’d complained that it was too quiet without the road noise.

  He was soon settled into a comfortable lounge with surprisingly modern furnishings, a mug of tea on a small table next to him with a large slice of Dundee cake on a plate in his hand.

  “I’m so pleased you accepted my offer of refreshments,” Mrs. Sanderson said, taking a seat opposite him. “On the television, policemen always seem to refuse because they’re on duty. Although I don’t suppose the television is like real life?”

  “I’m afraid not. Or else we’d see which one of the suspects was played by the most famous guest star and arrest them straight away. That what A . . . my partner always says, anyway.” Robin would have to watch himself. For some reason or other—fatigue, loneliness, and a sense of frustration on his part while a comfy chair, refreshments, and a cheery face worked their magic—he was at risk of letting his guard down.

  Mrs. Sanderson giggled. “Then you wouldn’t arrest me. I’d be played by one of those actress
es that you’d recognise because she has bit parts in everything but you have no idea what she’s called.”

  “No. It would be Dame Judi Dench, at least.”

  “Are you always so charming with witnesses? You’re not here only to talk about that hit-and-run, are you?”

  Worryingly perceptive. “Well, I am, but it’s part of a bigger picture.”

  “I thought so. I wondered if it was to do with the murder in Hartwood. The rugby team. Do you think the deaths are connected? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “You can ask whatever you like, but I may not answer.” Robin took a tactical sip of tea. “I’m investigating the murder, yes. Whether that’s connected to the hit-and-run, I couldn’t say. Because I’m here on secondment, I wasn’t around at the time of that investigation, and reading statements and going through reports is never the same as visiting the scene or talking to witnesses. The nearest thing we have to witnesses.”

  She nodded. Likely very little got past her. “Yes. If you’d had an eye witness, you’d have been able to catch the driver by now. I don’t think those tearaways did it, the ones who were convicted of stealing cars, and I suppose you don’t either but I won’t press you on that.”

  Robin couldn’t have been further from the truth when he’d said that a defence counsel would have pulled Mrs. Sanderson apart in the witness box. Quite the contrary. “I’ve been along the road, and I can quite imagine how dangerous it could be if the driver wasn’t taking care. I’m surprised you don’t have dozens of accidents.”

  “Oh, we’ve had our fair share this last thirty years. Especially with deer. Drivers don’t expect to have one bouncing out in front of them and even a roe deer isn’t small.”

  “Quite right.”

  “There was one killed the same night that poor lad got hit.”

  “Really?” That hadn’t been in the report, but maybe it had happened much earlier or later.

  “Yes. My son only lives a few doors down. He’d been away that weekend, and he got a shock waiting for him when he returned late on Sunday. Not only those yellow signs appealing for witnesses to the accident, but also a deer on his front drive, dead as a dodo and starting to pong.” She giggled again, face as cheeky as a schoolgirl’s. “I shouldn’t laugh. Thing is, my daughter-in-law’s a lovely girl but you wouldn’t believe how house proud she is. The thought that some wild animal had dared to expire on her property almost drove her berserk.”