A Duty of Revenge

by Quentin Dowse

  Having suggested how easily he could drop himself in the shit, I shifted to how he might improve his national standing as a Chief.

  ‘I’d better contact the National Crime Faculty to let them know we’re not setting up an incident room. I know they’re keen to visit forces investigating such crimes, looking for best practice. Pity. Could have got us some national kudos.’

  This was absolute bullshit. I had no desire to have that bunch of ivory towered know-alls sticking their noses into one of my cases. But he’d never know. My guess was he wouldn’t be able to resist the potential brownie points.

  ‘Right. Invite the Crime Faculty up here, Superintendent. Let’s get Chief Superintendent Sharples at Beverley to front the press. He deserves his moment of glory, with his staff. He can give his personal reassurance and also explain how we are setting up an incident room to ensure we add to the national intelligence picture.’

  Mission accomplished.

  *

  Within an hour, I had arranged for the Major Incident Room (MIR) at Driffield to be designated for the job and set the wheels in motion for an incident team to be assembled. The small market town of Driffield was ideally situated, being midway between Beverley and Bridlington.

  On my way to Driffield, I called in at the nick at Beverley, as the officers dealing with Anne Beedham had completed their initial enquiries and thought I should meet her. As the Senior Investigating Officer, it was not my usual practice to meet witnesses, leaving that to the officers on my team. I justified this as enabling me to keep a more objective overview of the incident, preventing the clouded judgement that I knew could occur by my personal involvement in the emotion inevitably surrounding every crime. However, it was custom and practice for the SIO to always meet a murder victim’s family, or indeed anyone at the heart of a case that may have been traumatised, badly injured or courageous, for example. The fact that all the lads had raved about how gorgeous Anne Beedham was, had absolutely nothing to do with it.

  Although she looked shattered, her eyes shone fiercely with what I guessed was a mixture of relief and excitement at still being alive. I had seen a similar look in the eyes of officers who had been in highly tense and dangerous situations and come out the other side. I also knew that the shock would hit her soon.

  I walked to the side of the desk behind which she was seated and held out my hand. ‘Mrs Beedham, pleased to meet you. I’m Detective Superintendent Matt Darnley, the officer in charge of this investigation.’

  She stood up and shook my hand, looking directly and challengingly into my eyes. ‘You better catch the bastards ’cos they’ll kill somebody… the one that had a go at me was evil and they never gave a thought to poor old Janice. I heard one of your lot on the radio crowing about how you’d saved her life, but these things shouldn’t be happening round here. Bloody police are useless.’

  She was extremely angry, which was bringing a flush to her cheeks and a dark fire to her eyes, which made her look extremely attractive, despite her outfit of a baggy white forensic suit, unkempt hair and ruined make-up. The anger infused her with an energy that made her tremble as she clung on to my hand.

  ‘We’ll get them, and your bravery in biting the one who attacked you has put us well on the trail. His blood was all over your blouse and that’ll get us his DNA. We’ll find him, don’t you worry.’

  I realised I was still holding her hand and returning her stare, but now her anger and emotion and my words of comfort had turned the situation into one of embarrassment – for me at least. She clearly knew the effect she was creating and using only her eyes she turned up the heat still further, until I looked away and dropped her hand. I turned somewhat embarrassedly towards DC Beatty, one of the officers that had dealt with her. He was grinning like an idiot and I bet itching to get out of the room to go and tell the team how the boss was acting like a horny schoolboy.

  I tried to regain my composure. ‘I just wanted to meet you and tell you what a brave lady you were and to let you know we’ll keep you and your family and, of course, Ms Cooper up to date with the investigation. I think we intend to appoint PC Peter Granger, the young man who dealt with you last night, as your Family Liaison Officer, is that right, DC Beatty?’

  ‘Yes, boss, he’s just come back on duty.’ He turned to Mrs Beedham. ‘He’s been to collect your husband and brought you some fresh clothes, then he’ll run you both home.’

  I explained it would be PC Granger’s role to be the point of contact between her family and the inquiry, keeping them updated with progress and doing all he could to help them recover from their ordeal. We exchanged a few more pleasantries before DC Beatty took her to get changed, while I popped outside to meet her husband. He was not as I had imagined; small, skinny, a bit scruffy and a good bit older than her. As we shook hands, I could feel he was trembling. He looked a damn sight more traumatised than his wife. I asked after his son and how he was taking it.

  ‘He’s thirteen, with raging teenage hormones and an exciting story to tell his mates… and the lasses… at the minute, he’s basking in the limelight and the gun gets bigger by the hour. But I know him and it’ll hit him soon.’

  ‘Kids are tough, he’ll be okay but he may need to talk about it to someone. I’ve assigned the young PC who drove you here as your Family Liaison Officer.’ I nodded towards the police car where I could see PC Granger waiting. ‘Has he explained his role to you?’

  ‘Yes, he’s been great so far. Rory, that’s my lad, seems to have taken to him.’ He was about to continue but at that point his wife emerged from the back door of the nick with DC Beatty, and he broke away from me and embraced her fiercely. After about twenty seconds he let his wife go, clearly embarrassed at showing such emotion in front of others.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ I smiled, as I shook hands with her again.

  ‘I do hope so,’ she responded, with a smirk that made it quite obvious what she actually meant.

  ‘Your wife has been a very courageous lady, Mr Beedham, you should be proud of her,’ I said to her husband as she walked towards the waiting police car, swinging her extremely shapely hips in an extremely tight skirt.

  While he turned to shake my hand, his wife gave me a sly wink – quite literally behind her husband’s back. She then turned to get into the car, saying a breezy ‘Hello again,’ to the young PC Granger, who blushed with pleasure.

  Mrs Anne Beedham might as well have had Beware – Dangerous Lady tattooed on her forehead. Tempting – but risky. As things were to turn out, PC Granger never did figure that out – until too late.

  *

  I looked at my watch. I’d been at work about fourteen hours, having been called out from home just before 4am, as events unfolded. The incident was not yet fully staffed but most officers were still out and about carrying out the urgent enquiries necessary in those vital first twenty-four hours.

  ‘Right, mate, I’m off, and don’t you be too much longer. You can finish setting up tomorrow,’ I shouted from the top of the stairs.

  Detective Sergeant Tony Ride, the incident room office manager, was a devil for kicking the arse out of the overtime in the first few days of an incident, but he was a grafter, best office manager in the force, and he was trying to make sure we were ready for a full briefing at eight thirty in the morning.

  The first day of setting up a major inquiry using HOLMES (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System) is always chaotic. Just finding a vacant incident room, enough IT equipment, securing the staff with the relevant experience and agreeing the necessary funding – basic organisation – is hard enough. Amidst that, the investigation itself has to tackle a plethora of immediate priorities. If a serious crime is not solved in the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours, you are usually in for the long haul, so early rapid organisation and progress is vital. In those initial hours, you have to maintain what I like to call “investigative velocity” – as rapidly a
s possible securing any evidence that is likely to disappear or weaken. So this means preserving, then examining, any crime scenes and securing associated forensic evidence, starting house-to-house enquiries around those scenes, getting written accounts from key witnesses and following up the immediate hot leads. In the middle of all this sits the office manager’s job. Controlling and organising the information flow, allocating new tasks or “actions” according to priority and continually planning the next move so as to keep the inquiry moving forward.

  ‘I’ll give it another couple of hours, boss. We should have a full team here in the morning and I want everyone to have a tray full of actions. I don’t want anyone hanging about after the briefing.’

  ‘Great mate, but be on your way by eight. It’ll be an even longer day tomorrow.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to watch Look North before you go, boss?’

  He flicked on the TV, which was mounted on a metal bracket in the corner of the room, in perfect time to catch the unmistakable theme tune of our local BBC news. I watched as Harry Gration rattled off the overview of the evening’s local stories. As usual, they ranged from serious crime and mass redundancies, to an art project in Grimsby and a skateboarding ferret in Scunthorpe. First up was our incident. A quick report from outside the Hardstone Building Society kicked the feature off, rapidly followed by Chief Superintendent Sharples outside Beverley’s Sessions House Police Station smoothly delivering the Chief’s message that we’d discussed earlier. The scene then switched to the old-fashioned, chintzy front room of Janice Cooper’s bungalow, where the still obviously distressed victim of this latest outrageous crime to sully the rural idyll of East Yorkshire was being comforted by the hero of the hour, our very own PC Willis. I had never heard of Harry Willis before but by now had learnt of his reputation from officers attached to the incident. He sat in uniform next to the woman whose life he had saved, holding her hand and looking at her in a very caring manner as she outlined her ordeal between muted sobs. As her account reached a climax, she virtually flung herself into the arms of her saviour, throwing her right arm across Harry’s ample midriff and dropping her head onto his chest. There she remained, her body heaving in a paroxysm of grief. As if briefed by Chief Constable Crabbe himself, our hero managed to combine solemn with caring and, while soothing the rescued damsel, he gave his own very modest account of his actions in the night.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ laughed Ridey. ‘He’s got a terrible reputation has Harry Willis, and this performance won’t help it any.’

  I mimicked his laughter, while actually finding the little scene quite touching. ‘Crabbe will think it’s marvellous. His caring sharing service at its best.’

  The report ended with a shot of Janice Cooper’s bungalow, which showed viewers, and indeed myself, just how isolated it was.

  ‘Bloody hell, we’re not going to get any witnesses round there. How the hell did they find the place?’

  I turned away from Look North’s next report and Ridey flicked the TV off as I sat back down behind my desk. How did they find Janice’s house? Atwick itself is well out of the way if you don’t know the area, and her bungalow looked to be down a grassy track well away from the village itself. As yet, I had not had chance to visit that scene, having spent the day initially with the Chief Constable, then meeting Anne Beedham at Beverley, before travelling on to Driffield and the incident room. The scene at Atwick was on my to-do list for tomorrow.

  Tony rifled through one of his trays and pulled out a statement. ‘It’s pretty obvious they knew they needed two sets of keys and who had them. They’d done their homework. Beedham’s house is easy to find… but this one?’ He quickly leafed through the statement. ‘Beedham claims they asked who had the safe keys and she gave them Janice’s name, but she says they never asked where she lived. So they must have known.’

  For the first time on the inquiry, I felt a quiver of excitement. ‘Raise two actions before you leave tonight, Tony. The first is to get PC Granger to go over that specific point again with her. Let’s be dead sure what they knew beforehand.’

  ‘Are you sure, boss? He’s a bit green. This could be crucial.’

  ‘No, he’s done a bloody good job so far and we’ve made him FLO. Brief him before he goes about how to handle her. We don’t want her clamming up if she has told them Janice had the safe keys and where she lives and now feels bad and doesn’t want to admit it. Judging by what we’ve just seen on the news, the address would be little use on its own. She’d have had to tell them how to find it. The second action is to get maps and aerial photographs showing the bungalow’s isolation.’

  DS Ride then showed me why I rate him so highly. ‘I bet they’d been there before. I’ll get all the incident logs checked to see if there are any reports of suspicious people in the general area. What do you think… go back three months for now?’

  He again leafed through Anne’s statement, reading quickly. ‘In the background information, she states there are nineteen people working at the building society. How’d they know which two had the keys?’

  ‘We can’t answer all the questions tonight, mate, but you’re right. Inside job? Someone’s working with the robbers, or a case of loose talk. Or I guess they could just have watched the place and followed them home. We need to raise that discussion at tomorrow’s briefing and put a small team on that aspect. Anyway, I’m off home. I’m knackered.’

  As I walked down the stairs, I heard a phone ring back in the incident room and Tony shouted, ‘Hang on, boss.’ I paused, looked at my watch and thought briefly about home and a whisky but turned and headed back to the incident room. I perched on the edge of a desk listening as he asked a series of questions while making notes on a scrap of paper. Two minutes later, he covered the mouthpiece of the phone and sat back in his chair, wearing a huge grin.

  ‘Now we’ve got a bloody body! Found half an hour ago by a chap walking his dog in a lay-by near Wilberfoss village on the A1079, about fifteen miles further towards York from where Anne Beedham was let out of the BMW. He’s been shot in the back of the head. DI Baldwin from Bridlington is already up there, calling out the troops and asking for an SIO. The Command Centre know you’re up here and are asking if you’re happy to assess the scene and take it from there… or do you want the duty SIO calling out?’

  Pound signs were flashing in Ridey’s eyes. I could tell he was itching for me to say I’d go, and ask him to accompany me. We were only about twenty minutes away from Wilberfoss, so he knew I’d go.

  ‘Come on then. Tell them we’re attending. It’s so close to our job it’s got to be connected. I can’t believe we’ve had two sets of nutters out with guns in one night in the sleepy East Riding.’

  Tony pumped his clenched fist in triumph. As we left the nick, he was tunelessly singing “We’re in the money”, his mind definitely not on some poor bastard with a bullet in his brain.

  Three

  19:15 That Same Evening

  Detective Inspector Baldwin looked bloody frozen. Mind you, standing in the dark at the side of a busy road, with a bitter north wind howling through the trees and a dead body only a few feet away, is likely to chill anyone. Mally Baldwin had been a DI for about twenty years and had not spent a day in uniform since he was promoted to the job at the tender age of thirty, and apparently destined for the top. He was typical of many officers who threw themselves lock, stock and barrel into a CID role, forsaking family life and only living for the job. His early promise fizzled out, as he failed to spot that times had changed – being a good detective no longer assured promotion. But I knew he truly loved his job and in my book he was an astute DI, and as I would have expected, he had the scene cordoned off and the scenes of crime officer and a uniformed officer were busy erecting a tent around the body. He knew that we could not move a body with an apparent gunshot wound at night unless we were willing to miss potential forensic clues. The tent would protect the body
and immediate scene for a closer examination in daylight by a forensic scientist and a Home Office pathologist. Mally had learnt years ago how normally mild-mannered scientists and pathologists could go ape-shit if an interesting murder scene, unusual modus operandi – and thus a potential scientific paper – was cocked up by “the plod”. The more we left well alone in such circumstances, the happier they were.

  ‘I’ve had a quick look, boss, but left things untouched. The doctor’s just declared life extinct and SOCO has taken a few photographs but retreated until daylight. PC Daines here has started a scene log and is taking a quick statement from the doctor.’ He nodded towards a uniformed policewoman talking to another young female a few yards further into the tree-surrounded lay-by.

  ‘It’s an odd one, boss, looks like a fairly young bloke but I can’t see his face ’cos he’s on his front in long grass. He’s stark naked and there’s no sign of his clothes, but from his physique I’d say he was under thirty. There’s an obvious single wound to the back of his head that I’m pretty sure is a gunshot. The body isn’t hidden. A local chap walking his dog found him, when the dog wouldn’t come away from the body.’

  I, of course, wanted to have a look and not just out of morbid curiosity. Ask any SIO and they’ll tell you that you can never fully appreciate a crime scene if you don’t get to see the body in situ. But that wasn’t the reason I was busting for a look. I reckoned I had a fair idea who our dead man was likely to be. I moved towards the blue and white police tape guarding the scene.

  ‘Not telling granny how to suck eggs, boss, but there’s nothing to see and there could be anything in that grass. It’s not even worth you going to have a peek.’