“I suppose Kevin Mower shopped me,” Laura had come back indignantly. “I thought I could trust him.”
“You shouldn’t have asked him to make inquiries for you. It put him in an impossible position when he discovered just how dodgy Ferguson was. But he didn’t need to tell me. I was already onto Ferguson. I don’t want you anywhere near him, Laura. I mean it.”
“He was hanging around Urmstone yesterday,” Laura had prevaricated. “But if he’s moved on, I’ll be safe enough with Ian Baxter. I promised to help him. He’ll be really pleased that there’s no official investigation going on. That’ll leave his brother’s lawyer space to pursue her campaign to get him released.”
Thackeray had not been happy with that. He came over and put an arm round her and ran his hand through the short curls that neither of them had yet come to terms with, a daily, painful reminder of the man who had hacked off her hair so roughly that her scalp had taken weeks to heal.
“You know you’re precious to me,” he said. “You know I can’t go through the sort of situation you got into with that other bastard again, especially now. Please, Laura, don’t take any risks.”
“I won’t,” she had assured him, shaken by the fear in his eyes. “I promise. No risks. I’ll see Ian and tell him that Ferguson is dangerous and he’s to get in touch with you if he does turn up again. It’s not very likely, though, is it, if he knows you’re looking for him.” It was obvious that Thackeray was far from mollified, but he did not argue any further that evening and went to work the next morning without reopening the subject. But Laura could tell from the set of his jaw as he left that he intended to do whatever it took to root out what he saw as a threat to her safety. For her part, she got ready slowly, waiting for the now regular sickness to subside, before calling Baxter and arranging to meet him outside the terraced brick cottage where he said his mother had assured him that their former next door neighbour, Peter Atkinson, now lived alone.
Laura found Baxter sitting in his car outside the house and slipped into the passenger seat beside him.
“Is he in?” she asked.
“I’ve been here half an hour and I’ve seen no sign of him, coming or going,” Baxter said. It was a misty morning, the low clouds breaking occasionally into a fine drizzle. “I suppose he could still be in bed. My mother says he hasn’t worked for years, spends his time here or at the betting shops in town. He was always a taciturn sort of guy, never said much. His wife Brenda did all the talking in that house. And after Stevie died…”
“Stevie?”
“His younger son. I’ve not told you about Stevie, have I?” Laura shook her head, knowing from Baxter’s expression that he would tell her about how Stevie died and she would not like it.”
“Poor man,” she said when Baxter finished and lapsed into silence again.
“He changed after that,” Baxter said. “Even I could see that and I was only a kid. And it was only a few weeks after the inquest that we realised he’d given in to Brenda at last and gone back to work. He was sneaking off every morning after the pickets left the village and he obviouslythought no-one would notice. But someone did. Inevitable, really, in a place like this. He must have been crazy to think he could get away with it.”
“By the sound of it, he had good reason to feel a bit crazy,” Laura said. “Look, there’s a light come on. He must be awake.”
“Good,” Baxter said, and they both got out of the car and crossed the road to knock on Pete Atkinson’s front door. It was opened by an enormously fat man with a shock of greasy gray hair, half tied back in a pony-tail, thick stubble, his belly hanging over the top of his jeans and stretching his sweatshirt.
“Ian Baxter,” Laura’s companion said, holding out a hand. Atkinson ignored it as his eyes flickered over both his visitors.
“Oh, aye?” he said at last, his voice almost entirely devoid of emotion. “You’d best come in.” He turned awkwardly in the narrow hall, which smelt of sweat and unwashed bodies, overlaid with cigarette smoke. Laura could not help wrinkling her nose in distaste as she followed Ian in.
“Who’s she when she’s at home, then?” Atkinson asked, nodding at Laura. “Your missus? I heard you’d got wed.”
Baxter explained as he followed Atkinson into a sparsely furnished living room dominated by a large screen TV tuned to a sports channel, where he waved them into a sagging and not very clean looking settee, while he sank into what was obviously his customary chair, surrounded by empty lager cans. He lit a cigarette and gazed at Baxter with a surly expression.
“You can bring yourself to speak to us, can you? You’re dad’ll not like that.”
“You must have known what would happen if you went back to work,” Baxter said quietly. The punishment for scabbing was always silence and it could last a lifetime.
“I lost my little lad in that sodding strike,” Atkinson said. “And I were never convinced that it weren’t your fault. You and Craig, any road.” Laura saw Baxter swallow down his anger and broke in abruptly.
“Is that what you’ve really been thinking all these years, Mr Atkinson,” she asked. “From what Ian says, Stevie followed them to the tip without them knowing.”
“If you’ve been blaming Craig all these years it’s no wonder he left and and never came back,” Baxter broke in angrily. Baxter ran a hand across his eyes wearily.
“Me and Brenda, we had to blame somebody,” he said. “You can’t live through that without somebody to blame.”
“We had no idea Stevie was following us,” Baxter said more quietly.
“I well, happen that’s true enough. But at the finish, I lost all my sons, one dead on t’tip, one buggered off and t’other hasn’t spoken to me since the day I went back to bloody work. They’ve forgotten that, your dad and Vic Randall and all t’other folk who can’t bring themselves to pass time o’day wi’me. I lost the lot, every bloody thing. I only went back to work when I could see the way t’strike were going. They were offering good money by then to them as would work and I needed it to pay t’bloody lawyers after Stevie died, didn’t I? I wanted to know who were to blame, who left that fence broken down so kids could get in, who were supposed to be guarding t’tip so daft young lads couldn’t clamber over it in t’pouring rain. And whether you and Craig were telling t’truth an’ all. That were more important to me and Brenda by then than a bloody failed strike. You can tell your dad that.”
“We were telling the truth, for what it’s worth, me and Craig,” Baxter snapped. “Nothing but the truth. And my dad’s dying.”
“Dust?” Atkinson asked.
“Dust and sheer bloody disappointment, I reckon,” Baxter said. “Don’t forget, he knows what it’s like to lose his kids, too. Billy’s in gaol, Annie’s in Canada and I’m in London. Not one of us is queuing up to visit him.” Atkinson nodded.
“I’ve not working since t’pit shut down,” he said, picking up an already open can of lager and taking a swig. “I’ll be on t’pension in a couple of years and that’ll be me done, finished. They might as well have buried us down there when they filled in t’pit shaft for all the good we are up here. So what do you two think your at, any road, digging up old bones? What’s the point of that?”
“Billy’s the point,” Baxter said angrily. “They won’t give him parole, and if the only way to get him out is to prove he didn’t do it, then that’s what we’ll have to do. I need to talk to Craig. Have you the faintest idea where he’s gone?”
“Aye, well, you’ll be lucky,” Atkinson said dismissively. “I’ve not got a clue where our Craig is. Roy’s still about if you want him, though he won’t talk to me. He lives on that new estate on Doncaster road. Though he’s away a lot, driving a truck to God knows where. Got a wife and a couple of kids, though I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting my grandchildren. They must be teenagers by now.”
Laura glanced around the disintegrating room and was not surprised at this litany of complaint. She was horrified at how little quarter was being
given to Pete, even within his own family, after all these years. Men had long memories in these parts, she thought, and the strike of ‘84 seemed to have ended more bitterly for the miners than anything since the General Strike in 1926. She knew that they had only taken a wage cut then. Last time, they had lost their whole reason for existence. It was a sad and bitter ending to a long tradition of blood, sweat and tears made tolerable by pride.
“Do you really think Roy might know where Craig is?” she asked.
“I’ve no bloody idea,” Atkinson snapped. “If I want to hear owt about my own family, I’ve got to keep my ears wagging and then it’s just pub gossip.”
“Do you think Billy Baxter killed the policeman?” Laura persisted. “Looking back on it.” Atkinson shrugged wearily.
“My family were in it up to t’bloody neck,” he said. “Brenda told t’police she thought she saw Billy on his own that night, though I never knew she were even out o’bed. I were fast asleep. But that’s what she said. She got up and looked out o’t’window as the lads were going picketing.”
“And the jury believed her,” Baxter said bitterly.
“She never said she were sure,” Atkinson snapped. “Just that it looked like him. Any road, after what she did later, you never know what Brenda might have said or done. I wouldn’t believe owt she said, then or now. Any road, Roy were out with him that night and generally Billy went in his car. But Col Randall says he took Billy. Someone got it wrong. And when Billy’s lawyers went seeking the rotas that Vic Randall were supposed to keep, they’d vanished, hadn’t they? That were convenient for someone, maybe, but not for Billy.”
“Are you saying the rotas might have been deliberately lost?” Baxter asked, his voice harsh. “To cover for someone?”
“How the hell do I know?” Atkinson shot back. “Ask Vic Randall, not me. He were supposed to be in charge of all that.”
“I think we’ll do that,” Baxter said grimly. “And we’ll talk to Roy.”
“Is there anything you want us to pass on to your son for you?” asked Laura, appalled by the ancient feuds which seemed still to be consuming these families from the inside out. Atkinson flushed slightly, and Laura wondered who this huge, flabby, silent man did speak to these days, if anyone at all.
“Nay, leave it,” he said at last. “What’s broke in Urmstone won’t be mended now. We’ll all be dead and gone soon and then no-one will even remember what this village were for. Industrial archeology they call it, don’t they, and we’ll be t’bloody fossils. I dare say they’ll dig up the pit one
day to find out what went on down there, but they won’t find t’bodies, will they, nor t’toil and sweat.” Apparently surprised by his own outburst, Pete Atkinson sank back into his chair and turned the volume on the TV up.
“Bog off now,” he said. “You’re wasting your bloody time.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Laura sat with Ian Baxter in his car outside Pete Atkinson’s house and looked at him in despair.
“It’s pretty hopeless, isn’t it?” she asked. “Too much time’s gone by. And whatever the rights and wrongs of Billy’s case, no-one wants to rake over it all again. There’s too much damage been done already.”
“I have to keep trying,” Baxter said. “I owe it to Billy, and to my father. He’d die happy if we could get Billy out.”
“How much time has he got? Honestly.”
“The doctor won’t commit himself, but not long, my mother says,” Baxter said. He looked at her anxiously and with just the faintest hint of contempt. “Are you backing out then? Don’t you think you’ve got a story after all?”
Laura hesitated. She had come to Urmstone this morning in the teeth of Michael Thackeray’s objections and wondered herself how far her limited energy would take her, but that was something she did not want to discuss with Baxter, whose sudden changes of mood were understandable but left her feeling uneasy.
“What do you want to do next?” she asked, cautiously.
“What I really want to do is get back home to my wife and baby daughter, but I don’t think I can leave my mother yet. I thought we should maybe tackle Vic Randall again, and then I had a call from Col, his son, asking me to meet him for a drink at lunchtime. Could you come with me, to see what you think of him. He doesn’t come to Urmstone often, I’m told, so it would save us chasing all over the county to wherever it is he lives now.”
“I suppose I could manage that,” Laura said. “Then I really must get back to Bradfield. I’ve other things to do.”
The two of them drove back to the centre of the village and parked close to the welfare hall, but when they got out of their cars, Baxter seemed to be overcome with fury as he spotted a stocky man in a scruffy waterproof leaning against a lamp-post with his arms folded across his chest. Baxter crossed the road towards him with Laura in his wake.
“You’re still here, are you, Sergeant Ferguson,” Baxter said, his hands clenched at his sides as if restraining a powerful urge to thump the older man. “Is there anyone in the village you haven’t been badgering in the last few days.”
“You know what my inquiries are about,” Ferguson said. “Andy Fielding was a mate of mine and I’ve never thought he got justice. There were more people involved than your brother, and if I want to follow my inquiries, there’s nothing you can do to stop me. I’m not doing anything illegal.”
“You were here during the strike, were you?” Laura asked suddenly, irritated by the man’s manner. “I was only a girl but I saw it on TV.”
“Me and half the Met,” Ferguson said with a smirk at the memory.
“Mooning at women from bus windows? And waving your overtime money around at men that couldn’t feed their families? I remember seeing that in the flesh,” Baxter snapped.
“They loved it, the tarts,” Ferguson said, his smile of triumph not reaching his eyes. “It was all good fun. Anyway, that’s all water under the bridge. What I want to know now is who else was involved with your precious brother, Mr Baxter. I was never convinced he was the only one and I reckon we could prove it now. Forensics has moved on.”
“And I know that your inquiries aren’t even official,” Laura broke in angrily, her face flushed. Ferguson looked surprised for a second and then scowled.
“If you must know, I’m on my holidays, if it’s anything to do with you. I thought you wanted tourists up here in the third world. Trips round those famous slag heaps and all that?” The sergeant’s tone was cool enough in spite of the crude contempt of his words, but his eyes were as angry as Ian Baxter’s and Laura put a warning hand on her companion’s arm, afraid he might take a swing at Ferguson.
“But I also happen to know that you’re not even an officer in the Metropolitan Police any more, and that the Yorkshire Force is anxious to talk to you about what you think you’re doing here,” Laura said.
“There’s nothing for you in Yorkshire,” Baxter said. “Officially or unofficially, there’s nothing for you. My brother’s been banged up for more than twenty years for something he didn’t do, and I intend to prove it.”
“So you want to pin someone else down as well,” Ferguson said triumphantly. “We’re on the same side, you and me. Only difference is that I don’t believe your brother’s innocent. He was in it, too, up to his neck.”
“You and I will never be on the same side, Mr Ferguson,” Baxter said. “Not then, not now, not ever. I advise you to get out of Urmstone and stop harassing people here, because the next thing I’m going to do is report to the Yorkshire police that I’ve seen you here again. I know they’re going to be interested in that.” Ferguson did not seem very impressed by Baxter’s threat but he shrugged and turned back towards his own car which was parked further up the main street.
“You started all this,” he said over his shoulder as he unlocked the car. “You don’t just want your brother out, you still want him cleared after all these years. Don’t blame me if your campaign brings results you weren’t expecting.” And with that
he got into his car and drove rapidly away up the hill towards the motorway and the south.
“You should have done a citizens’ arrest,” Laura said wryly.
“I’ll report what happened to the local bobby, if I can find him,” Baxter said. “They probably don’t have one any more. Come on, let’s see if Vic’s at home and if not we’ll go down to the welfare to meet Col. If you’ve got time?” Laura nodded doubtfully and followed Baxter up the main street to one of the identical semi-detached houses which lined both sides of the road. He knocked at the door but there was no reply.
“He’s may be at the welfare with Col, if his son doesn’t get over here very often,” Baxter said. “My mother says Col keeps out of the way after what happened to him.”
“He was the one who went to goal for the motorway incident?” Laura said.
“That’s right. He swears he was set up by the police, but he served his time and I think he’s given up any thought of clearing his name. Not like Billy.”
He led the way back down the hill and into the welfare bar, just as ill-lit and chilly as the last time they had visited, and with even fewer drinkers. It was Colin’s resemblance to his father that Ian quickly spotted: a taller version but with the same broad shoulders and bull neck, the same red hair, in the son’s case shorn to a fiery stubble. Randall watched Baxter and Laura Ackroyd weave their way through the mainly empty tables towards him, his face impassive.
“I’d not have known you,” he said to Baxter as he pulled up two stools and introduced Laura.
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