It stacked up, and Tyler’s mind hurtled around the possibilities left to him. He could feel the nose of the plane already tilting towards the ground, and he glimpsed the hard earth coming up to meet him.
If Dammers cracked, the whole thing would unravel and Hillman would be stuffed, regardless of his cleverness, his ruthlessness, his contacts and his empire. Dammers was a paler, slighter version of the same creature and, above all, he was afraid of Martin Hillman.
Paul Dammers was the type to sell his own mother’s skin and bones if there was something to be made from the sale; but he would put his head beneath the blade before he would betray the real monster.
There was no question left to ask in the presence of this thing. Hillman had destroyed lives and would doubtless go on doing so all the way to the top of the hill. And as it stood, there was nothing that could be done to stop him.
Tyler could have walked out of that interview room and kept on walking; but there was one question left to ask. He felt his stomach tighten and turn.
‘You asked Douglas Marley about this “girl”?’ said Tyler.
Victory was on Hillman’s face now. It was bursting out like a sunrise.
‘Naturally I asked him. That’s partly why I went to see him, like I said.’
Hillman was going to make the detective work all the way to the finishing line.
‘And what did he tell you, Mr Hillman?’
‘He said that she was someone he had seen before.’
‘Did he know her name?’
Hillman was loving it.
‘If I remember correctly now …’
Tyler’s hands were curled tightly into fists – fists that he longed to smash into the centre of that arrogant facade, and give Hillman a taste, a mere taste of what he, one way or another, had given Alan Dale.
Through clenched teeth, glancing first at DS Mills, who was looking tense enough to be having precisely the same thoughts, Tyler spat out the question. ‘Do you know the name of the girl?’
‘Got it,’ said Hillman, grinning around the room. ‘Dale.’
Tyler was falling towards the looming Earth.
Hillman and Dammers had the same ace card.
‘Dale?’ said Tyler, and the question sounded lame even to him.
‘Marley said he thought the girl was the boy’s sister.’
For an instant the inevitability made Tyler want to laugh.
31
Sheila Dale answered the door and the two detectives followed her into the now familiar front room. She didn’t offer to make a drink and for once it was the furthest thing from Tyler’s mind.
‘Miss Dale,’ he said. ‘Do you want to tell me exactly what happened on the day your brother died?’
She sat down. Tyler and Mills sat opposite.
And then she began.
On Friday, June 16, 1972, the day Alan died, she had gone to the market in Stoke to buy fresh meat. She usually went on a Saturday morning, more often than not the two of them together. But on that day she had broken with routine.
‘The truth is,’ she said, ‘I had no reason to go to market that day. I can’t explain why I went. The day before, I had followed Alan home from school. After what had happened to him at the hands of those … I followed him home.
‘Nobody bothered him that day. He went straight home. But I think he had a feeling. My brother was not stupid. He was angry with me, saying that he didn’t need his big sister walking him home, and that I would only make things worse for him. He made me promise that I would never do it again. And I promised.’
She broke off, the pain of that promise as raw as it had been all those years ago.
‘He said that they would leave him alone now; that they’d had their fun. He made me believe that for his sake, but I doubt that he believed it himself.’
‘So, what happened on that Friday?’ asked Tyler. ‘What happened on the day that Alan went missing?’ He cleared his throat unnecessarily. ‘On the day your brother died.’
‘Around about the time that school finished, I walked down to the market.’
‘Which route did you take?’ asked Mills.
‘I went down Honeydew Bank and into Stoke. While the building work was underway we avoided The Stumps. I told myself that the reason I was going to market on Friday was so I could show Alan that I wasn’t following him. That if I came back with the meat, he would know I’d been somewhere else. Do you understand that? I had to let Alan know that he could trust me. I didn’t want to be responsible for adding to his burden.’
‘But you didn’t return the same way, did you?’ said Tyler. ‘Instead of returning up Honeydew Bank, you went towards the bottom of The Stumps.’
Dale nodded.
‘Why did you do that, Miss Dale?’
She closed her eyes for a few moments. The two detectives watched her, each trying to imagine what she was seeing in the wretched darkness.
‘When I left the market, I felt compelled to go to that place.’
‘Place?’ asked Tyler, knowing.
‘The place they took him, two days earlier. Ever since I had seen those marks on Alan, and he told me what they had done, I couldn’t get the images out of my head. I still can’t.’
‘Miss Dale, I know this is difficult, but I need you to tell me what you saw next. Please, take your time.’
Tyler had, many times, recited the cliché that the English language is the most expressive of all languages. At that moment he cursed its inadequacies, along with his own.
‘As soon as I reached that place, the bottom of The Stumps, I knew why I had gone to the market, the real reason. It wasn’t that I wanted to prove something to my brother; it was because I feared for him.
‘Animals like that don’t stop. They keep going and if nobody stops them, something has to happen.’
‘I was fooling myself, playing games with myself. Nobody else was going to do anything to save my brother.’
Tyler sat silently, alongside Mills, the two of them knowing that there was nothing left to do or say except wait for this woman to tell it in her own way and in her own time.
‘I could hear noises as I came to where they had blocked off the path. I knew they were there. Then I heard a shout and I saw them running away. I went under the barrier and when I came to the site it looked deserted.
‘But then I heard a sound, a cat or something, I thought. An animal trapped, possibly injured, or dying. I thought of those devils running away and I imagined that they’d been torturing some poor creature.
‘And I admit – I was relieved.
‘I pictured Alan sitting at home, safe and well, the weekend to look forward to and school almost over. I imagined him one day becoming something in this world. I imagined my brother putting all of his troubles behind him, stronger because of all that he had gone through.
‘Alan was a very special person. And for those moments I saw him fulfilling his potential. Becoming the person he was destined to be, and who we would all be so very proud of.
‘I thought I would find the injured animal, take it to the vet, and return home with the fresh meat and a tale to tell. Over tea I could tell Alan and Mum and Dad about the poor little thing that I had saved, and we would do something special together that weekend. Celebrate that school was nearly over for another year, and that maybe things were set to change.
‘And then I saw him. He was lying in the dirt and rubble. I could see that his face was bleeding. He was a mass of bruises and cuts, but his face, his poor face …
‘He was crying when I found him, but when he saw me he stopped. Even then he tried to hide it from me – can you believe that? He tried to smile, as though to say, ‘Fancy seeing you here and what’s that you’ve got for tea?’
‘He saw the anger in my eyes, he must have. I told him that this had gone too far, that he was leaving that school right away. We would tell Mr Wise we’d had enough of his school for bullies and make sure the entire city knew what he was running there and that i
t wasn’t safe for decent children.
‘Alan was trying to tell me I had it all wrong. That he had been playing. Fallen over and bashed himself up a bit – that’s what he said, exactly how he put it: bashed himself up a bit. If you had seen him – nobody should have to endure that. Nobody could go on enduring that.
‘He picked himself up off the ground and made to dust himself off, like it was nothing that a good wash couldn’t put right. He was a brave boy, was my Alan, and nobody bore what he had to. He still wouldn’t give in, wouldn’t admit what they had done to him … and let us take him away from that place.’
Mills took a long, deep breath.
Tyler asked: ‘What happened, Miss Dale?’
The tears were falling, and then they stopped, replaced by a gaze into the distance, where a screen invisible to the two detectives showed the eternal re-run of that horror from which Sheila Dale might never escape until the day they buried her.
‘When Alan stood up I saw a glimpse of the future. Alan’s future. I knew that all my earlier imaginings of him living to survive this; of him becoming a man – something in this awful world – I knew that it was all wishing on stars. That boys like Alan are never allowed to live, to thrive, to become what they have it in them to become. That it would all remain unfulfilled because the only road left for him to walk down was paved with nothing but more pain and suffering.
‘I walked towards him, and his smile faded as though he had seen something terrible approaching. I saw the terror in his heart for the first and last time and it was awful, too much for anyone to bear. He took a step back and then, too late, I saw the ditch behind him, the huge trench into which they would pour the foundations of their precious new building.’
The gaze was crumbling, and the catch in the throat announced the storm that was waiting to come down.
‘I shouted his name, but he was gone. The scream inside me wouldn’t come out, and I stood at the edge, looking down on his broken body. I called his name, but I knew he was gone.’
Mills made the drinks while Tyler stayed to try and comfort Sheila Dale; but all he could do was watch impotently as she turned herself on the spit.
As the storm lashed down inside the room, he thought about his own trials. About the ghosts from his past and the fantasies of retribution and justice that had haunted him for as long as he cared to remember.
Never had he come close to witnessing such overwhelming pain and grief, though he had many times looked into the glass and believed that he had seen the real thing.
Mills came back in with the drinks, but the two officers said not a single word, merely looking at each other, listening to the rawness of it, not caring to intrude until the savage ferocity showed signs of subsiding.
Mills made a call, requesting that a couple of local officers be dispatched, as it didn’t seem prudent to leave Dale to her own company. While they waited for the back-up, she sipped at the tea that Mills had prepared and insisted she drink, and at last Tyler asked her why she had not reported the events at the time.
‘I saw him lying there, still and at peace,’ she said. ‘And all I felt was relief: simple, selfish relief. I would not have to worry about my brother ever again. His suffering was over, and he was in a better place. I told myself all of those lies until my head was filled with them, and then I crawled back under the barrier and I went home and I said nothing.
‘Can you believe that?
‘I let the hours pass, Mum and Dad going out of their minds – and the longer I left it, the harder it was to break my silence.
‘I went to bed and I cried the whole night and every night since. The police came and all I could tell them was that something terrible must have happened because Alan had never done this before, not coming home. I was sure they would find him quickly. The work would start up again, his body would be discovered and they would find out what had happened. Then they’d round them up, destroy their lives the same as they had destroyed Alan’s.
‘But the days passed and nothing happened. I went down to look. They’d already started on the foundations and I knew Alan would never be found. I knew then that his story would never be told because I hadn’t the strength or the courage.
‘I could still have come forward, I know that. I was scared for myself. People would think that I had killed him. You’re probably thinking the same thing now.
‘I thought of what that would do to my parents, and to me. I couldn’t bear it. I left them what little hope they had, and did everything to nurture that hope. I tore myself in two trying to believe it myself.
‘In my darkest hours, I kept myself sane imagining that in time the truth would come out and that his killers – because they did kill him, one way or another – would be brought to justice. Even more than that, I hoped and I prayed that one day they would wake up knowing what they had done and that the knowledge, the burden of it, might destroy them.
‘And the years passed … and I think you know the rest.’
‘And thirty years on,’ said Tyler, as if to himself, ‘a boy and his dog opened everything up. The whole rotten can of worms.’
‘As soon as I heard about the body being found, I knew I would make my confession at last. That I would finally do what I should have done all those years ago.’
‘Yours is not a confession,’ said Tyler, glancing at Mills as he said it.
‘Oh, but it is. All the people I deceived, all of your time wasted. If I had an ounce of the courage that my brother had, I would have told you everything straight away. I would have come forward the day Alan died – no, none of that would have been necessary. If I had that much courage I would never have let it come to that. I would have done something to protect my brother.’
Mills stretched out a hand and placed it on the woman’s arm.
‘Alan would have been proud of you,’ he said. ‘And so would your parents.’
‘For keeping silent for thirty years? If there’s any justice, I will burn in hell with the rest of them.’
32
Chief Superintendent Berkins was not a happy man. He was taking great pains to explain to DCI Tyler why he was not a happy man. Tyler kept his peace, waiting for the nutshell.
‘In a nutshell: Martin Hillman is, to use the words of his legal representative, treated like a common criminal and yet he still manages to point you in the direction of the person who, to my mind, is clearly culpable. But do you bring Miss Dale in? Or is it tea and sympathy with a couple of PCs from Leek, no doubt making us the laughing stock of that station along with the rest of Staffordshire and I don’t know where else.’
Tyler had heard enough. ‘I think that Sheila Dale is deserving of nothing more than our sympathy.’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Tyler!’
Tyler wanted to ask Berkins if he was training to be a solicitor, because it didn’t take a detective to work out that shouting ‘Detective Chief Inspector’ practically every time he opened his mouth was the first sign.
‘Fact: according to Miss Dale, she was the only person present at the scene when her brother died. Is it not at least a possibility that she killed him?’
Tyler was about to interrupt.
‘Let me finish,’ said Berkins. ‘Fact: when her brother’s body was found – and she clearly never expected it to be – she came forward, but not before. Thirty years she has sat on the knowledge of what happened to her brother – thirty years! And when she does come forward, it is to provide us with the map of a wild goose chase, no doubt hoping that something might turn up to let her off the hook. When it doesn’t, she tries Plan B: a confession that falls short of actually confessing that she killed her brother.’
Berkins sighed heavily. ‘Come on, Jim. You’ve been in the job long enough.’
‘I don’t buy it.’
‘That doesn’t stop it being a possibility that has to be seriously considered, though, does it. When Alan Dale died, she was there. The two of them, brother and sister. No-one else. Her word that he fel
l and wasn’t pushed – not to mention the fact that she left him there to rot.
‘You’ve allowed feelings to intrude, Jim, and I believe that has impeded your judgement.’
‘Would we be having this conversation if Hillman wasn’t one of the names that came up?’
The chief superintendent, like many in his position, could do a good line in looks that might break the balls of a lion. Unleashing a textbook example, he said, ‘Would you like to reconsider that question – while you still have the chance?’
Tyler apologised, and his apology was accepted, not in words, but with a gratuitous twiddle of both ends of the moustache.
‘And for the record, Jim, I do not give a fig for MPs or aspiring MPs. If they break the law, I want them brought to justice. By the same token, neither do I care for the emotional outpourings of ‘so-called victims’ looking for a way out at somebody else’s expense, do you understand me?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Dale comes in: Perverting the course of justice and the murder of Alan Dale.’
Treading the finest of lines, Tyler said, ‘You don’t think that she had a part to play in the death of Steven Jenkins, sir?’
‘I think we will leave it there for now, DCI Tyler.’
‘Are you suggesting,’ said Tyler, ‘that the death of Steven Jenkins is unrelated?’
‘We don’t know who killed Jenkins. But, it seems clear to me, that we have a good idea who killed Alan Dale. The problem appears to lie in convincing the detectives.’
When Tyler returned to the CID office he found Mills looking ready to burst. He was holding a letter. Tyler read it, all the time his hands shaking. Neither detective said anything. Then Tyler said: ‘Scotland! At least that explains the second-class stamp.’
Mills then told him that the ‘oatcake woman’ was urgently awaiting his call. Tyler began to laugh, and he went on laughing until a cascade of tears was washing down his face. ‘The time for oatcakes is past,’ he said, somewhat enigmatically.
Red is the Colour Page 22
