“But there were written records of who went where and when?” Baxter asked. “Do they still exist?”
“The police took some of them away at the time but they complained they weren’t complete. As far as I knew they were all there. We’d no computers back in them days. It was all put down on paper, meticulous. Any road, as I said at the time, they’d prove nowt one way or t’other. The police said the men set off at the time Fielding was killed, but I don’t see how they can be that precise, can you? But as the court was told at your Billy’s trial, everyone was accounted for by someone else. It would have been difficult for anyone to get away with owt unless a whole car-load was involved.”
“Two car drivers claimed to have had Billy on board at the trial, and that’s what did for him,” Baxter said bitterly. “The jury didn’t know who to believe so they believed nobody. And now I get the feeling Ferguson thinks people who didn’t go anywhere at all might be involved, like me or Craig.”
“I got the impression he thought it might be me and your dad,” Vic said, with a grim smile. “But I think they’re just stirring the pot to see what floats to the surface. And I think summat else, an’all. They’ll not find owt. They didn’t then and they won’t now.” Randall turned away and made his way slowly back to the doors of the welfare hall.
“Take care, lad,” he said, by way of farewell. Baxter looked at Laura with a helpless expression.
“Nothing he said changes my mind about getting away from here as fast as I can,” he said. “For the second time.”
“Vic’s a tough character,” Laura said. “He reminds me of my grandmother.”
“He’s an unrepentant old Stalinist,” Baxter said with a smile. “But he held this place together in ‘84, and after. He fought like a lion. They don’t make them like that any more.”
“But too old now to do much for your Billy,” Laura said quietly as they walked back to the car. “Maybe it’s down to us then?”
“You, maybe,” Baxter said. “I don’t think I can go through it all again.”
CHAPTER FIVE
DS Kevin Mower stared at his telephone thoughtfully. There had been a time, not long after he transferred to Yorkshire from the Metropolitan Police under a dark cloud of his own creation, that he had fancied a red-headed reporter called Laura Ackroyd. But she had unaccountably rejected his charms in favour of his older and, to his mind, seriously less attractive boss, and he had had to content himself with treading a narrow line to maintain a friendship with Laura without threatening his own relationship with Michael Thackeray. This time, he thought, he seemed likely to fall off that tightrope from a great height.
He had not taken Laura’s request to discover what DS Jim Ferguson was up to very seriously at first. There had been no reason to suppose that the London officer was undertaking any more than routine inquiries on the Yorkshire force’s patch or that someone in the hierarchy above had not granted the necessary permission. Anything more serious and he was sure that he would have heard about it on the grapevine. Although he was too young to have been more than a schoolboy when the Met and the Yorkshire miners came into violent conflict all those years ago, he had been told the legendary tales of battles won and lost on the coalfield when he joined the Met. He had heard little that was sympathetic to the miners’ cause, and plenty which excoriated their tactics, which had frequently spilled over into violence, not least after a copper had been brutally murdered in Urmstone. Memories of that outrage were long in London and forgiveness was not an option, as more than one colleague had told him when they learned that he was moving not just to the north of England, which was foreign enough territory, but actually to Yorkshire and the area in that huge county where the killing had happened.
But when he had followed up Laura’s phone call and made a few calls of his own to former colleagues in the Met, he soon became seriously alarmed. Laura had sworn that the case she was interested in was long dead, very cold and certainly not risky. But the more he had inquired into the
career of DS Jim Ferguson, the more he became convinced that she could have got it very wrong indeed. Jim Ferguson, it turned out, looked like a loose cannon, and one he must absolutely warn his boss about, however betrayed Laura felt by that.
He got to his feet reluctantly and tapped on DCI Thackeray’s door. To his slight surprise, he found his boss looking more relaxed than he had seen him for a while. Thackeray was a notoriously moody man and Mower hoped that what he had to tell him would not take the smile off his face too completely.
“Something odd’s turned up, guv,” Mower said. Thackeray said nothing, merely raising an eyebrow in interrogation. “I was chatting to an old mate in the Met and he told me that a guy called Ferguson, a DS who left the job under a cloud years ago, was interested in this part of the world. He bumped into him in a pub and he was ranting on about an old murder case needing to be reopened before they let a cop-killer out of gaol.” To Mower’s surprise, Thackeray did not seem to be particularly thrown by the information.
“I heard the same whisper,” he said. “I was meaning to find out just who Ferguson is and what he’s up to, but I haven’t got round to it yet.”
“Right,” Mower said. “Well, I’m not sure how much anyone knows about it at this end, if anything, but Ferguson seems to be trying to raise some steam over the murder of PC Andy Fielding in Urmstone during the miners’ strike in ‘84. I thought at first the Met must have some cold case investigation going but Ferguson’s nothing to do with the Met any more. He’s on some crusade of his own, claiming that the man convicted…”
“Billy Baxter,” Thackeray said abruptly. “No-one in Yorkshire’s likely to forget the case.”
“Nor in the Met, evidently, according to my mate. I only got the folk legends from the miners’ strike, and I never really heard much about this one.”
“You were lucky then,” Thackeray said, all trace of a smile gone now. “So what did your mate tell you?”
“Apparently Ferguson’s claiming that Baxter’s accomplice or accomplices were never caught, and maybe DNA would pin someone else down now. My mate didn’t know whether anyone still in the Met is still involved with Ferguson, helping him on the quiet, but he seemed to know that he was probably freelancing, and he guessed that he was making out he’s still in the job. That’s an offense for a start.”
“Apparently Baxter’s legal team are trying to get the case reopened on their own account, still claiming Baxter was innocent,” Thackeray said. “I had heard that much. That may be what’s sparked Ferguson’s activities.”
“And could he have been innocent?” Mower asked.
“I’ve no idea. I was only a beat bobby myself back then, a long way down the food chain. I only went down to the coalfield once and was very glad to get out of it. But as far as I can recall the jury didn’t take long to convict Baxter. Which doesn’t mean that if he’s served his recommended term he shouldn’t be due for release now. But apparently the Parole Board have turned him down several times.”
“Ferguson was the victim’s best mate, apparently,” Mower said. “No doubt he’s not keen on Baxter ever coming out, but finding accomplices after all this time sounds a very long shot. In any case, he sounds like a dangerous piece of work himself. He was charged with assaulting a prisoner in a cell, about six years ago – not the first time, apparently, but the first time anyone thought they could make it stick. But it didn’t, when it got to court. He was acquitted. But they took disciplinary action anyway, and in the end he resigned on the grounds of ill-health. You know how these things go.”
“I know how they go in the Met,” Thackeray snapped. “Not here.”
“Right, guv,” Mower said quickly. “Anyway, you seem to know about Ferguson. I just thought I’d better fill you in. My mate didn’t take it too seriously but perhaps he should have done. Perhaps there’s something in it.”
“I’ll have a word with Don Hartnett,” Thackeray said. “See what he can tell me about Ferguson. He was a DI ba
ck then, retired now, of course, but he may possibly know what Ferguson’s up to. I don’t know how close they were. As far as I can discover there’s nothing official going on at all, with us or the Met. So if Ferguson’s been seen up here, he must be on his own. But we’ll not have him running around Urmstone pretending to be a police officer, don’t worry. There’s enough people over there with very long memories and very old scores to settle, believe me, for it to be a provocation too far. Leave it with me.”
“Right, guv,” Mower said, trying not to let his relief show. If Thackeray knew as much about Ferguson as he seemed to, he was sure that he could leave it to him to warn Laura off. There was absolutely no need for him to get involved at all.
Ian Baxter walked slowly back to his parents’ house from the small parade of shops which had been a thriving centre of village life when he was a boy, now reduced to a single mini-market and an outpost of the local council. Even the chippie, magnet for the lads too young to drink in the welfare club, had closed, though the youngsters still seemed to congregate there, sitting and swinging their legs on the low stone wall, hooded tops up, cigarettes cupped in their hands, seeming to watch his every move. Even in jeans and sweatshirt under his worn jacket, he felt conspicuous and the hair on the back of his neck prickled slightly as he walked past them, conscious of their hostile eyes.
He had taken a wire basket at the door of the shop, hoping to find some small luxury he could take home to his mother who was waiting expectantly for Laura Ackroyd to bring her grandmother over from Bradfield to see her. But it took no time at all to realise that he was in a time-warp and that Urmstone did not do luxuries these days. He and his wife Carrie had certainly never felt wealthy in London, but even their unfashionable suburb seemed like another world, a world where almost anyone could afford a bunch of flowers, some fresh fruit, or a box of
chocolates occasionally.
He found nothing worth buying amongst the mountains of sliced white bread, bruised bananas and endless shelves of fizzy drinks, snacks and canned lager. In the end he settled for a packet of chocolate biscuits and and a couple of cans of beer which he hoped his father might be able to drink. He paid the pale girl on the checkout with a twenty pound note and as she scrabbled for change he saw how little cash there was in the till. His face tightened. This, he thought, as he ran the gauntlet of the threatening youths outside again, had become the bloody third world all over again, just as it had been in ‘84.
He walked angrily back up the hill and saw that Laura’s car was parked immediately behind the red Vauxhall from which DS Ferguson was still watching the house. He had been there when the Baxters went to bed the previous night and was there again when they got up in the morning. He assumed the man must have been there all night and he wondered what sort of policeman he was who was prepared to spend the night on surveillance on his own outside the house of a dying man. It did not, he thought, make sense.
His mother opened the front door and took him into the kitchen where he found Laura sitting at the table with a cup of tea in front of her.
“Hi,” Laura said. “Joyce is with your dad. He greeted her like a long lost sister.”
“He was right pleased to see her,” Madge said. “She was a tower of strength back in ‘84. We’d no shortage of helpers, mind. We had women from the universities in Leeds and Bradfield, even women from Greenham Common, so la-di-da you could hardly understand a word they said. But they all mucked in. We couldn’t have done without them.”
“I remember,” Baxter said, although he and Craig had taken little notice of what the women had been doing raising funds and keeping the village fed. They had been much more interested in trying to persuade the men to take them out into the exciting adult world of picket lines and skirmishes with the police. He unwrapped the chocolate biscuits and put them on the table.
“You shouldn’t have bothered,” Madge said, irritably. “We can still put summat on t’table for visitors.” Ian shrugged and poured himself tea.
“You go and talk to Joyce,” he said to his mother. “She’s come all this way to see you.”
“With bad knees and all,” Madge said.
“She’s had one operation,” Laura said. “She’s waiting for the second. She should be more mobile then.” When Madge had gone to join her friend in her husband’s sickroom, Laura looked at Baxter quizzically.
“You don’t look as if you’ve had much sleep,” she said. “Was that Ferguson I parked behind out there?”
“Yes, that’s him,” Baxter said. “If he doesn’t move soon I’m going to complain about police harassment. He’s no right to be watching us like that. I don’t know what the police think they’re up to.”
“I’ve got someone I know trying to find out a bit more about Ferguson. That might help.”
“Maybe,” Baxter said, wearily. “I need to get home. I really must get back to work on Monday.” His mind lurched back to the year of the strike, the year he had grown up, he thought, long before he should have done; the year he had learnt to bottle up his anger and keep his mouth shut; and the year he had decided to escape from Urmstone if it was the last thing he ever did. For a moment he was very tempted to tell Laura things that he had never divulged to anyone since he was fourteen, but old loyalties made him hesitate. He had never known who had killed PC Fielding in that brutal way. All he had ever been sure of, and had repeated over and over again to anyone who asked him, was that the murderer was not, could not have been, his brother Billy, certainly not that night when he had staggered from their bedroom barely able to walk to the cars which would take the young miners picketing, or any other night, for that matter. Billy was not, could not have ever been, a killer.
He sighed, aware of the murmur of voices in the next room.
“He’ll not live long enough to see Billy free, whatever happens,” he said.
“That’s terrible,” Laura said.
“You know, back then, all Craig and I wanted was to be part of the strike. We were jealous of Billy and Roy because they were that few years older and had started work. Yet I could never have worked underground. I went down once on a school trip and I was absolutely bloody terrified.
I don’t know if my dad ever knew that. I think he guessed, when he realised I was determined to stay at school and make a different life for myself. But all he’s ever said is ‘You did all right for yoursen.’ I think he imagines I make loads of money, but I went into the wrong sort of law for that.
Until yesterday, all these years after, when he finally told me he was glad I’d not gone down the pit, glad I’d made something of my life. Not something better, mind, just something different. I wish he’d told me that years ago. ‘Your mam’s proud of you,’ he said. But he’d never say that of himself, the old beggar. That would be a concession too far.”
“That year must have been awful,” Laura said awkwardly, not quite knowing how to react.
“Everything changed,” Baxter said. “The women turned into lions to keep it all going and the men ended up broken. And I lost my brother.”
They were interrupted by a knock on the back door and Laura could see Ian cursing quietly as he went to open it. A woman huddled into a bright pink quilted jacket stood on the doorstep, a pale face under a cloud of bottle-blond hair, ruffled into a halo by the wind. She flung her arms round Ian before noticing Laura sitting at the table over her half-finished cup of tea.
“Oops,” the woman said, unclasping her victim. “I heard you were home but I didn’t realise you had someone with you. You don’t remember me, do you, Ian, pet?”
“Jackie?” Baxter said tentatively, unsure that this was the same person who had once been his brother’s girlfriend, a buxom lass back then whose ample curves had made Billy the ribald envy of his mates, and their younger brothers.
“Aye, well, we’ve all changed a bit in twenty years,” the woman said.
“Did you come to see my dad?” Baxter asked.
“No, I came to see you, you daft lumm
ox,” Jackie said. “Aren’t you going to introduce us? Is this your wife, then?” Baxter laughed and introduced Laura as Jackie took off her jacket, revealing skin-tight jeans above stiletto heeled boots, seemingly set to make herself at home in |the Baxters’ kitchen.
“Is he right poorly then, your dad?” she asked.
“Not good, and getting worse,” Baxter said. Jackie took a seat at the table and nodded, her face darkening.
“It never bloody ends, does it?” she asked no-one in particular. Baxter poured her a cup of tea, smiling to himself, as he remembered things about Jackie that Billy had confided which were more than, at fourteen and fifteen, he had needed to know. Jackie took the tea and cupped her hands around its warmth.
“It’s cold enough to freeze your tits off out there,” she said to Laura. “Are you going to write summat about Billy, then?”
“I hope so,” Laura said. “So many people seem to believe Billy was wrongly convicted that it has to be worth investigating.”
“Everyone except the police,” Baxter said gloomily.
“Aye, well, I still feel bad about Billy,” Jackie said. “He made me promise to wait for him when he got remanded. He never thought they’d find him guilty. Why would he ,when he hadn’t done it? But then when he got life…” She shrugged. “I visited him a few times, but then he asked me not to bother any more. I don’t know if he really meant it or not, but it seemed to make sense. In the end, I married a lad from Barnsley, had a couple of kids, and he buggered off, as they do. I’m back in Urmstone now to be near my mam, working at the call-centre: shit money but there’s nowt else round here and I’ve two teenagers to feed.” She hesitated and looked at Baxter.
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