Evil Valley (The TV Detective Series)

by Simon Hall

  ‘And I still disagree,’ said Whiting smoothly, sliding out of the office and shutting the door.

  Dan lay on his bed, Claire next to him, Rutherford on the floor, the dog’s tail thumping softly against the carpet. It was such a reassuring noise, for him the sound of home. It was all he’d longed for during those cold and despairing hours on Dartmoor. Even his ankle had stopped aching. Just a bad sprain, the doctor had said, with the usual implication that her patient was a hypochondriac. A couple of days rest would see him fine.

  Claire had been wonderful, fussing over him, bandaging his ankle, cooking him supper. It wasn’t the best curry he’d ever had, spinach and potato madras, not enough meat and not hot enough for him, but that scarcely mattered. He was being looked after by the woman he …

  And there he’d stopped the run of thought. By this woman he … was very fond of. He would leave it at that. For now, at least.

  Dan was still wondering what she was going to say earlier, when she’d first got to the flat and seen him. He must have looked a dreadful state. He could see the shock in her eyes. He’d opened the door and she’d flung her arms around him, swept him into the bedroom and cuddled into him. He thought she was crying, could only half hear her through the muffling fleece he wore.

  ‘Don’t go scaring me like that again,’ she’d said. ‘When I heard someone had been shot on the moor I thought it was you. I don’t ever want to go through that again. I still need you. I … I …’

  Her words had tailed off. I what? he kept thinking. I what? He knew what he wanted it to be. But if she said it, what would he do then?

  Lizzie phoned and the moment had been broken. She always had such magnificent timing.

  He’d answered the call with heavy resignation, expecting a savaging for missing that outside broadcast, when they’d left Princetown to go down to Evil Coombe to search for Nicola. He had his justifications ready but she’d been surprisingly understanding. We got Loud to haul some other police inspector in front of the camera for a live update she’d said, and used your lunchtime news report again. It was fine.

  The ratings had soared because of their insight into the Nicola case. His insight he thought, but didn’t say. Lizzie was only sorry it had ended the way it did. Dan had been about to agree, that Nicola’s death was a dreadful tragedy, but she’d gone on to lament that the shooting of Gibson had denied them the chance of covering the story all over again at his trial. Dan didn’t say anything. It was pointless.

  He was expected in the office later, too, she made that clear. He could rest for a few hours, but that was it. She wanted him live in the studio tonight to talk about what had happened in the final hours of the hunt for Nicola and what it had been like in the old tin mine.

  Dan shuddered at the thought. It was the last thing he wanted to relive.

  The memories wouldn’t leave him, kept playing in his head. He was dreading his dreams, didn’t want to sleep alone in the coming nights. Adam in despair, bending helplessly over Nicola’s lifeless body in that black hole of a cave. Gibson swaying and dropping after the volley of hissing bullets, the blood oozing from his chest. Gibson’s gun pointing at him, that feeling of expecting the shock of a fatal shot.

  He wondered if he’d ever get over all that had happened. And would he ever stop feeling that if he’d been cleverer, made more of an effort, Nicola Reece would still be alive?

  Dan reached down and stroked Rutherford, cuddled Claire closer. He screwed his eyes shut to try to leave it all behind, the gunshots, the cold, the darkness and the death.

  He’d have to see Nicola’s mum soon too. He had something to ask her.

  Epilogue

  IT WAS THE WEEK before Christmas and a classical sweep of pure snow had settled on Dartmoor. Children tumbled and screamed, dived and sledged, cut swathes in the white canvas with their rolling, gathering snowballs, the tracks leading to a sentinel army of smiling snowmen, standing a frozen watch. Rutherford joined in the children’s cries with a crescendo of yelps and barks, danced around them, his padded feet flying across the shining carpet as he chased the hurtling melee of delight.

  Claire held Dan’s gloved hand tightly as they plodded up the old mine track towards Higher Hartor Tor. The frozen ground creaked and crumped under their stomping feet. Bill, the young stonemason Dan knew from his days covering the environment, followed, occasionally throwing a stick for Rutherford. It was the first time Dan had been back here since Nicola’s death. He’d been waiting for the moment, knew it must come, and had finally found the strength to face it. But he was still tense with the memories.

  They neared the top of the hill and he readied himself for it, tentatively turned his head, looked over towards Evil Coombe. His eyes ran down the valley to where Gibson’s little tent had stood, but all he could see now was a long furrow of sleeping snow, punctuated by the occasional grey granite boulder. Claire followed his gaze silently, knew what he was thinking and squeezed his hand harder. He had no idea what he should be going through. Pity, regret, sorrow, fear, anger, hate, he’d expected something, but nothing came. All he felt was hollow.

  Claire stood with him, allowed the minutes to pass, let him take it in, then tugged gently at his hand. They turned away without a word, back towards the old Eylesbarrow mine. The black mouth of the adit was blocked now, packed with black soil, pitted with granite rocks, covered in a grid of rigid wire mesh. A group of children kicked snow at each other alongside it.

  ‘Have you got any particular stone in mind?’ asked Bill, scanning the ground.

  ‘No,’ replied Dan. ‘Take your pick. Whichever you think will work. There are plenty to choose from. But fairly close to the entrance to the mine please, that’s all I’d ask.’

  The stonemason’s stout frame worked its way through the granite boulders littered around the tumbledown remains of the mine. He bent over, checking them for size, occasionally running a hand across a craggy surface pockmarked with green moss, feeling the texture, brushing off some powdery snow.

  ‘This one,’ he said, kneeling by a stone about five feet long by a couple wide. ‘It feels like a good size for a young girl. Is it OK?’

  It was just an ordinary piece of Dartmoor granite. ‘Fine.’

  ‘And you want to keep it simple? Just Nicola Reece, 1999 – 2008?’

  ‘Yes please. It’s what I agreed with her mum.’ He tried to forget his suggestion of adding the word sorry. ‘Just a simple memorial.’

  ‘Fine,’ replied Bill, fumbling a set of tools out of his rucksack. ‘I won’t be too long if you want to go off for a walk. I know what you loving couples are like.’

  ‘We’ll stay with you,’ said Dan, looking at Claire. ‘I’d like to watch you carve it.’

  They strolled over to the ridge looking back on the valley. The snow seemed to have settled everywhere, a uniform layer of white across the expanse of the upland. A couple of Dartmoor ponies chewed at some stray grass poking hopefully through the snow. They tossed their chestnut manes in the yellow sunlight as if in disapproval of the meagre pickings.

  ‘Did you ever find out what the dispute between Mr Breen and Whiting was about?’ asked Claire. ‘I’ve often wondered. I heard gossip, but nothing concrete.’

  Dan wound an arm around her. ‘It’s a strange story. Just between you and me? Adam told me as a friend.’

  ‘Of course. As ever.’

  Dan gently kissed her cheek. ‘Adam had an old detective inspector who used to mentor him when he was a sergeant, just like you. His name was Chris Golding. Adam says he was the best he ever worked with and taught him most of what he knows.’

  Claire turned, then nuzzled into his side. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Apparently this Chris was pretty driven. He couldn’t bear letting criminals off the hook. Old school, I think you might call it. But he went a bit too far one day in making sure he had good evidence against a suspect.’

  ‘It happens. Not so much these days, but it happens.’

  ‘Yeah, I know
that now,’ said Dan with feeling. ‘Long gone are the days when I thought the police were clean and straightforward.’

  ‘Sometimes you have to fight dirt with dirt.’

  Something in her voice made him want to ask what she’d done that wasn’t entirely scrupulous, but another time, he thought. Maybe he wasn’t ready to hear that yet, and certainly not today.

  ‘Yep,’ Dan replied. ‘But I’ve already learnt the golden rule is – don’t get caught. Chris did.’

  Claire smiled knowingly. ‘Spot on. What did he do?’

  ‘His mum was a victim of one of those distraction burglaries. You know, when a couple of men turn up at someone’s house? One of them says they’ve got a report of gas leaking, or water, something like that. He keeps the person talking while the other goes over the house and steals whatever they can find under the pretext of looking for the leak.’

  ‘Uh huh. Low and nasty. Usually aimed at older people.’

  ‘Yep. Hence Chris’s mum. She had some jewellery stolen, which his Dad had given her. He’d died a couple of years before from cancer and she was distraught. Chris went after the guys who did it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He got them, but he didn’t have any evidence. So he created some.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He got one of them in to the interview room and gave him a real going over. Adam was there. He remembers it almost word for word. He says it was quite a pasting the guy got, threats, violence even, the whole works. But he was a professional criminal and knew they didn’t have anything on him. So he kept denying it and Chris had nothing.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He suspended the interview and got the guy a cup of tea. He made out he’d given up. After that, they let him go. But then he took the mug and planted it at the home of one old man who’d been a victim of a similar distraction burglary. Chris went round to see him again under the guise of re-interviewing him to see if he could get any more evidence. He suggested to the man the burglars took up his offer of a cup of tea. The guy was quite confused and basically agreed. Chris planted the mug, and there’s your evidence. A nice DNA profile from the saliva and some of the guy’s fingerprints. Chris had made sure he’d wiped his own prints off.’

  Claire didn’t say anything. Dan looked down at her, trying to read her expression, but it was inscrutable.

  ‘What went wrong?’ she prompted.

  ‘This guy’s lawyers demolished it in court. The old fellow wasn’t up to being a witness and couldn’t confirm the mug was his, had been in the house, anything. There’d been a hint of Chris doing things like that before so an investigation was launched. It was the time when police standards were getting tighter. Or more politically correct, some might say. Anyway, whatever. Whiting came in and got him.’

  ‘How? Surely Mr Breen didn’t say anything?’

  ‘No. He just stonewalled. He took the classic politician’s way out and told Whiting he couldn’t remember what happened. But Chris made one big mistake. The interview with the burglar was recorded on video. The mug was clearly visible. Whiting confronted him with it and, according to Adam, gave him a choice. Resign from the force with your reputation intact and take a good pension or be charged. Chris quit. Adam says he’d about had enough anyway. He didn’t like the modern emphasis on criminals’ rights and all the legal hurdles and red tape the police were facing. He always used to say a man forfeits his rights when he turns to crime. It was the victims he cared about. He lives in New Zealand now, according to Adam.’

  Claire looked at him, her head tilted on one side. ‘So Whiting didn’t actually follow the rules then, did he? He gave this Chris a choice instead of just charging him?’

  Dan stared at the horizon where the white line of the expanse of snow met the perfect blue of the sky.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he mused. ‘Maybe he’d say he did his duty in removing an unreliable police officer from the service. Maybe he’d say he didn’t need to go any further and ruin him.’

  He thought back on his encounters with Whiting, all he’d heard about the man, that hissing voice, the tiny teeth and those narrow, flicking eyes. ‘Maybe duty isn’t a black and white concept, not even to Marcus Whiting,’ he added.

  Dan reached down and rubbed his ankle. It had fully healed, but still he sometimes imagined a pain there. Perhaps it was the surroundings, prompting his memory.

  ‘You know what it was with him, don’t you?’ he said. ‘I mean, why he was so driven. The duty thing of his.’

  Claire shook her head, tussling her black bobbed hair. Damn, that was attractive, he thought.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’d heard it was something to do with his family, but nothing specific.’

  ‘It was kind of that. He gave an interview to the Western Daily News just before he went back to Cardiff. It was an exclusive. I sometimes wonder if he did it to spite me, after the run-ins we had. Lizzie was annoyed we didn’t get it. It was a good story.’

  Dan almost managed a smile at the thought. It was a creative form of revenge, he had to hand it to the man.

  ‘It made interesting reading,’ he said. ‘His dad was a civil servant and heavily into duty. But that wasn’t the reason. The young Whiting rebelled against his parents, as all good growing lads do. I certainly did.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘The article didn’t go into great detail. But he was at a boarding school and apparently some teacher made him a prefect to try to straighten him out. One night Whiting turned a blind eye while a group of lads sneaked out to meet some girls at their school. They had to climb a fence to get in and one of the boys fell off and broke his back. He’s had to use a wheelchair ever since. Whiting blamed himself and thought that if he’d done his duty – as his dad had drilled into him – the lad wouldn’t have got hurt.’

  Claire stamped her walking boots against a granite boulder, dislodging plates of snow. She scooped some up and rolled it into a tiny snowball, threw it down the valley. Dan wondered what she was thinking.

  ‘Has Mr Breen said anything more about whether he’s going to quit?’ she asked finally.

  ‘He’ll only say he’s still thinking about it.’

  ‘Do you think he will?’

  Dan leaned back into her. ‘I genuinely don’t know. Nicola’s death has really hit him. He won’t stop blaming himself. I think he’s wondering if he’s up to the job. But I’m only guessing. Every time the subject comes up he just goes quiet and says he doesn’t want to talk about it. I think he finds it hard that we were so close to saving her. She’d only been dead a little while when we found her. It was that blow on the head that did it. The scientists say she’d just about freed herself from the ropes around her ankles, but stumbled and fell over them as she tried to stand up. She hit her head on some piece of metal from the old mine workings and the injury, combined with the shock and cold, killed her. She was already freezing from having been out on the moor and in the mine for hours. If we’d have got there an hour or so sooner, we would have saved her.’

  A crow cackled as it wheeled above them, a swooping black dart in the azure sky. Dan gazed at it as the bird hovered effortlessly, then tilted its wings and landed elegantly on a black rock in the white snow barrow of Evil Coombe.

  ‘How much are you paying Bill to carve the stone?’ Claire asked, a fog of her breath drifting over him.

  ‘A couple of hundred pounds.’

  ‘So what are you going to do with the rest of the money Gibson left?’

  Dan stared out across the valley. ‘That I don’t know. I have been wondering. No one who knows who it belonged to would take it. I don’t see the sense in wasting it by burning it or something like that. It just seems pointless. It might at least do some good. I think it’ll have to be an anonymous donation to charity. I’ll probably give it to one that looks after horses.’

  A memory of a story he’d once covered drifted into his mind. ‘I know there’s a charity which specifically looks after Da
rtmoor ponies,’ he said. ‘I’ll give the rest of the money to them. It’s about the best I can do.’

  Dan’s words softened as the memories of that night in Evil Coombe and the mine gathered again in his mind. They were all impenetrable darkness, lit intermittently by flares of gunfire and the sweeping beams of flashlights, both revealing only death. The images were always laced with flowing strings of numbers and letters; “law bee sorry, 605, band of gold, 679, Denton and Hyde, Manchester”.

  He blinked hard, then closed his eyes, but knew they’d still be there, waiting for him. He wondered how long it would be before the visions faded.

  Claire nuzzled into his side. ‘You did your best you know. Both you and Adam. You must believe that. You did all you could. Come back to me.’

  Her voice sounded pleading. She held him tight, then stepped back, found his shoulders and shook them, turned his head with a gentle but insistent hand and stared into his eyes. Dan wondered what she saw there.

  ‘Come back to me,’ she said. ‘Don’t hold it against yourself that you couldn’t save Nicola. You did the best you ever could. The best anyone could. Come back to me. Please. You did all you could, that and more. You did your very best.’

  ‘I know,’ Dan replied softly, hoping one day he would come to believe it.

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