Cruel Tide

by Ruth Sutton

  And that was all he said as he made his way across the newsroom and out. Andrew’s head went up.

  ‘Shut up, Andrew,’ said Judith.

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  When she rang Fred at the station café in Morecambe, Donna had still not appeared and her boss seemed genuinely anxious about what had happened to her. ‘She phoned in sick last week, Thursday,’ he said, ‘but it’s nearly a week now and not another word. It’s that man of hers, he hurts her you know. “Walked into a door”, my arse. Are you going to check at home? Go during the day. If he’s there he can be real trouble, that bloke.’

  Judith reassured him on that point and thought about how long it would take her to get to Morecambe and find Donna’s house. She might have to wait for her to come home.

  She was working on the logistics of a trip to Morecambe when Bill Skelly came back into the newsroom, hung up his hat and started opening letters and messages that had accumulated on his desk during the morning. While Judith was checking train times, Bill began to rummage around in a cupboard by Ed Cunningham’s office, which brought him out to see what was going on.

  ‘Looking for a tape recorder,’ said Bill. Judith was watching them now. ‘Sure there’s one here somewhere. Here it is.’ He stood up with a large machine in his hands.

  ‘Haven’t used one of those for a while. Too bloody heavy to lug around,’ said Ed Cunningham.

  Bill put the tape machine on top of the messy desk and picked up an envelope. ‘This arrived some time this morning,’ he said. ‘Anyone know where it came from? Hattie?’

  ‘She came back from lunch a while back,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Reel of tape,’ said Bill. ‘Nothing else. No note. Head Reporter written on the envelope, in capitals. Looks like someone can’t write to save his life.’

  Judith, Ed and Andrew stood round Bill Skelly’s desk as he struggled to set up the tape to playback. Andrew found an extension lead and the machine sprang to life. Bill pressed the ‘Play’ button and they waited. For a few moments there was nothing to be heard but clicks and scratching noises. Then the sound of someone breathing and a voice began to speak, distorted but quite audible:

  ‘The kid was murdered. Police are bloody useless. You’ll have to get it done, get them done, you and that girl with the red hair. I’ve done my part, now you do something. I’m watching. I’ll know.’

  CHAPTER 13

  ‘Play it again,’ said Thornhill from behind his desk. Bill rewound the tape, pressed ‘Play’ again and they watched as the reel jerked into action, then crowded closer, straining to hear the words.

  ‘It’s a crank. Somebody winding us up,’ said Thornhill. ‘Must be.’

  ‘Someone who knows the lass has a lot of hair,’ said Cunningham.

  Judith stepped away from the group towards the window. Suddenly she felt very trapped.

  ‘Those kids at the home,’ said Cunningham, ‘they know Judith. They’re stirring things up, just from devilment, little bastards. Nothing better to do likely. Life of Riley down there. I’d put them all out to work, or get them making something, earning their keep.’

  ‘Sewing mailbags?’ asked Judith.

  ‘Well, that’s what they’ll end up doing, isn’t it, at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in one of those holiday camps called prisons.’

  ‘Shut up Ed, for God’s sake,’ said Bill, pointing to the envelope. ‘Look, this was addressed to me. Who brought it? There’s no stamps or postmark.’

  ‘Hattie!’ yelled Thornhill. ‘Get in here.’

  Hattie didn’t have far to go as she and Andrew were already standing in the doorway, trying to see and hear what was going on.

  ‘Where did this package for Bill come from?’ asked Thornhill. ‘It didn’t come in the post, so who brought it?’

  Hattie straightened her hair. She wasn’t used to being spoken to so brusquely. ‘It was just there, when I got back from lunch,’ she began.

  ‘Where, woman?’ roared Thornhill. Judith noticed his red face, and looked across at Hattie whose eyes were beginning to fill with tears

  ‘It’s all right, Hattie,’ said Judith. ‘No one’s blaming you for anything. We just need to know if you saw whoever brought this in.’

  Hattie shook her head. ‘It was propped up against the door,’ she whispered.

  ‘Outside or inside?’ Judith asked. The men had taken their cue from her and kept quiet.

  ‘Outside,’ said Hattie, ‘just leaning on the door, at the side of the pavement. I picked it up, saw what it said and brought it upstairs for Bill. I thought he must be expecting something and whoever left it couldn’t be bothered to bring it up themselves.’

  Ed lowered his voice. ‘Did you see anyone, in the street?’

  ‘No, no one,’ Hattie whispered again and fumbled for a handkerchief in her sleeve.

  ‘OK,’ said Thornhill. He was calmer now and his face had resumed its normal colour, although the usual expression of mild boredom had been replaced by anxiety. He picked up the envelope. ‘So this came from someone out there who just left it on our doorstep, literally, and walked away.’

  ‘Fingerprints,’ said Judith. Thornhill dropped the envelope immediately and it slid onto Thornhill’s desk and down again onto the floor. There was a scramble as everyone tried not to tread on it. Judith pulled down her sleeve and picked up the envelope without touching it with her fingers.

  ‘We need the police,’ said Cunningham.

  Bill groaned. ‘Damn the police,’ he said. ‘Apart from possibly finding some fingerprints, what could they tell us that we don’t know already?’

  ‘It’s evidence,’ said Judith. ‘It may have something to do with what happened to Stevie.’

  ‘Who the hell’s Stevie?’ said Cunningham. The others looked at him.

  ‘What do you actually do in that filthy cubbyhole of yours all day?’ said Thornhill, leaning across towards Cunningham’s face. ‘Stevie is the kid from Montgomery House who was found dead in the mud last week. Judith’s been working on the story, we’ve put stuff out about the funeral, appeals for help and all that, and you’ve supposedly read them all. I wonder what we’re paying you for?’ Cunningham blinked but didn’t respond.

  ‘Whoa,’ said Bill. ‘Not now, right?’

  Thornhill sat down heavily in his chair and looked out of the window. Hattie looked at each man in turn, eyes wide. Judith stretched out a hand towards her. ‘You can go back to your desk now, Hattie. We need someone on the phones while we sort out what to do. Take Andrew with you.’

  Hattie and Andrew did as they were bid and the rest of them were able to shuffle apart from each other a little. Judith noticed her heart was beating quite quickly.

  ‘We’d better not touch the tape or the envelope again,’ she said. ‘I can call DC Tognarelli, or Sergeant Morrison, or Sergeant Clark if we can’t find anyone else.’

  Cunningham turned away towards the door of the crowded office. ‘I’m not waiting for the entire Barrow police force, who our friend Miss Pharaoh seems to know so well, to descend on us. Despite your assumption that I’m a waste of space, Alan, I for one have some proper work to do. There’s a big spike out there waiting for some more rubbish to go on it.’ He left, and Thornhill’s office felt less claustrophobic without him. Bill sat down and Judith leaned against the windowsill.

  Judith said, ‘Ed’s right. We need the police. We all need to know who dropped this thing off and what they’re really getting at. ‘What does “I’ve done my part” mean? And who’s he going to be watching?’

  Thornhill shook his head. Bill said nothing. ‘Right then,’ said Judith. ‘If you’re not going to do it, I’ll call Tognarelli.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ said Thornhill suddenly. ‘My paper, my office, my call, and it’ll be Sergeant Morrison, not some pipsqueak of a constable.’ He looked at them. ‘I think I can manage this, unaided, thank you.’

  Judith took the hint and went back to her desk, with Bill more reluctantly behind her.

  ‘He wouldn�
��t know a real story if it got up and bit him,’ Bill muttered to Judith as he went back to his desk. ‘If there’s no response from the police in a few minutes, Judith, you call that I-tie copper,’

  ‘Tognarelli,’ said Judith. She could see why Sam got so irritated by this refusal to use his proper name.

  ‘Yes, him,’ said Bill. ‘He sounds all right, better than that useless Morrison.’

  ‘Thornhill won’t like it,’ said Judith.

  ‘Sod him,’ Bill hissed through the side of his mouth. ‘This story needs to move before it’s stone cold. Nothing like a good voiceover to perk things up. The radio will love it.’

  ‘No one on the radio knows much about Barrow,’ said Judith.

  ‘Well, they will soon,’ said Bill, ‘if we play this right.’

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  It didn’t take long for Sergeant Morrison to push open the door of the newsroom, with Sam Tognarelli just a few steps behind him. Morrison nodded to Bill and Sam to Judith before the two men went into Thornhill’s office and closed the door. Hattie sniffed and blew her nose before the regular thud of her typewriter started again. Bill watched the door. Judith knew that he expected to be invited into the office at any moment, but they could hear the tape playing again, once, twice, before the editor’s office door opened a fraction and Thornhill’s voice shouted, ‘Bill, Judith, get in here!’ In his cubbyhole Ed Cunningham sneered and lit another cigarette.

  ‘We’ll need a statement from Hattie,’ Morrison was saying. ‘And we’ll take the tape and the envelope straight over to Forensics. If we’re lucky, there’ll be something to lift and we might even have the prints on file already, whoever it is. Any ideas, anybody?’

  Judith was surprised that she was the only one to respond. ‘The only person I can think of is Steven Stringer’s brother Anthony Lennon. He’s been away for years but the sister Donna said he reappeared a few weeks ago. It might have been him who told Stevie that he was needed at home. Can you play it one more time? Donna said he had a funny voice.’

  ‘He probably disguised it anyway,’ said Morrison.

  ‘Please?’ said Judith. Morrison’s gloved hand rewound and played the tape yet again. ‘We’ll need a copy,’ he said. ‘We’re going to wear it out if this carries on.’

  Judith listened, trying to picture the man Donna had described to her. There was a faint twang of something in the voice, but nothing she could recognise. She shrugged and shook her head. Morrison took a couple of evidence bags out of his coat pocket, took the tape off the machine and placed it carefully into one bag. Then he picked up the envelope, held it up to the light and turned it round, looking at it carefully before he placed this, too, in an evidence bag, and turned to go. ‘DC Tognarelli here will take a statement from Hattie, and from you Bill, and we’ll let you know if and when we get any results. In the meantime, if you think of anything else, anything at all, get hold of the lad here.’ He pointed at Sam. Morrison left the newsroom and Sam walked across to speak to Hattie, taking his little notebook and pencil out of his pocket as he went. From her desk Judith was able to see and hear most of their conversation.

  Sam introduced himself quietly and it sounded as if he was explaining about himself and his name. Hattie smiled, and began to repeat what she’d told them a while before, but this time more carefully, as she anticipated what might be important. ‘I’d been to the Co-op,’ she said, ‘to get some bits for supper you know, and walked back down here.’

  ‘Time?’ asked Sam, without looking up.

  ‘About quarter past one,’ said Hattie. ‘That’s when I usually get back after lunch.’

  ‘So you were walking down the street, coming from the Co-op?’

  Patiently, Sam got more and more detail out of Hattie as she recalled what had happened just before she found and picked up the envelope.

  ‘It was just propped up against the door, outside, by the street?’

  ‘They must have known it would be found by someone coming in, or it could have been taken by someone just passing by,’ said Hattie.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sam, and she beamed at him.

  ‘When you said ”they”, Hattie,’ said Sam, ‘do you think there was more than one person?’ Judith heard a faint Scottish accent in his voice, with ‘person’ sounding like ‘pairson’. She’d not noticed it much before. Hattie shook her head. ‘I didn’t see anyone in the street,’ she repeated. ‘Nobody.’

  Sam thanked her, chatted to Bill for a few minutes taking notes all the while, nodded again to Judith and left. The newsroom felt suddenly very quiet.

  ‘What a nice young man,’ said Hattie. ‘And such a charming voice, not like that awful man on the tape.’

  ❖ ❖ ❖

  Sam had been back in the CID room only a few minutes when he got a call. ‘Morrison?’ said the voice. ‘Hobbs, Forensics. About the PM report on Steven Stringer?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam, ‘it’s my case.’

  ‘Nothing untoward,’ said Hobbs. ‘Hardly anything at all actually. Just a few lines. Hayward’s usually pretty thorough but he must have been in a hurry. Even the signature’s more of a scrawl than usual.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Sam persisted. He still didn’t understand why Hayward had said something different to Judith, or why she would lie about it.

  ‘Makes life easier all round,’ said Hobbs. ‘You lot should be happy about that.’ He rang off.

  The phone rang again. ‘Morrison here. That call from Hobbs in Forensics, that was for me. It’s my case. I’m the sergeant, you’re the constable. That means it’s my case that you might work on for me, got that?’

  ‘Yes, sarge, said Sam. ‘Sorry, sarge.’

  The phone went dead and Sam looked at it before putting the receiver down again. His face was hot. For a while he flicked idly through his notes before he realised what he still needed to know. Where was Grayson? Sam asked around and finally tracked him down in the cafeteria. Harry’s mouth was too full of bacon sandwich to allow for conversation, but he fished his notebook out of his inside pocket and handed it to Sam, who peered at the scribbled notes and asked, ‘This is what Forensics told you?’ Harry nodded, swallowed and took another slurp of tea before he took back his notebook and read the notes himself. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘the three cigarettes butts, two from the scene and one picked up behind Montgomery House were all the same brand, but it’s not certain that they were smoked by the same person. The time of death was estimated between nine and midday.’

  ‘Funny time of day to top yourself, isn’t it?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Don’t know whether people in that state worry about what time it is,’ said Harry. ‘What did Forensics say about the rope?’

  ‘Nothing much. Ordinary rope, could have come from any garden shed. Wasn’t new, so not bought for the purpose. Again, no real sign of premeditation.’

  ‘And harder to track down?’

  ‘Impossible, I’d say.’

  ‘It’s probably the most obvious,’ said Harry. ‘The guy killed himself for some reason, and we need to know more about him.’

  ‘Morrison’s said he’s going up there to see Edwards and the matron about Harries’s next of kin, and get the handwriting sample we need to check the note.’

  ‘Morrison’s going there? Too many cooks. We could go round in circles unless someone sorts out who’s doing what.’

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Not a lot,’ said Harry. ‘I’ll be off around six, all being well, down the Feathers for a pint or two. Why?’

  ‘We need to get our act together if Morrison’s going to start poking his nose in,’ said Sam, ‘and that means meeting outside the office. I’ll see you in the Feathers, around half six. OK?’

  Sam fell asleep for a while when he got home and Harry was on his second pint by the time Sam found him, sitting by a smouldering fire in the corner of the snug at the Feathers, reading the Furness News.

  ‘What’s up then?’ he said. ‘What’s Morr
ison moaning about now?’

  Sam grimaced. ‘It’s typical really. He gives me all the work to do but he wants it to look as if he’s doing it all. Gets very snotty if anyone twigs that’s he’s not doing much. Like today, when the Forensics bloke rang. He asked to speak to Morrison about the lad’s PM report that we’ve been waiting for. Morrison was actually on his way over there and I said something about it being my case. So the bloke tells me a few things, and next thing I know Morrison’s on the phone shouting about it being his case. I can’t trust him to do his job properly or let me do it.’

  ‘Hold on, too much at once,’ said Harry, putting down his pint and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘What did Forensics tell you?

  ‘That the PM report confirmed the kid had drowned so that was that. Said that the report was pretty sketchy.’

  ‘Could Hayward have missed something? He’s off sick now, isn’t he?’

  Sam hesitated. ‘Apparently he told someone that the kid didn’t drown, that was no water in his lungs.’

  ‘What?’ said Harry, putting down his drink. ‘When?’

  ‘A few days before we got the report. That Pharaoh girl talked to Hayward in the pub and he told her.’

  ‘So why did he change his mind?’

  ‘God knows. When I saw him he insisted he’d been wrong and got mixed up. He was in a bad way, gave me a line about not trusting people, but I don’t know what it was all about.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Still in hospital apparently. Sounds as if Morrison has been asking to talk to him, from what they told me this morning. Must have left unfinished business all over the place, and Morrison hates that. Sometimes I think his only aim in life is to make it as easy as possible for himself, regardless of what really needs doing.’

  ‘So Morrison gave you a hard time,’ said Harry. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Yes, sarge, sorry, sarge. What else could I say?’

  ‘Very wise,’ said Harry.