by Dan Laughey
‘22 Granby Terrace, Headingley. Shall we go knocking again?’
Sant chewed on his toothpick. ‘Let’s do a bit of staking out first, Capstick. If this is the right address, it’s better if Mosley doesn’t know we’re looking for him.’
Capstick navigated the short journey to Granby Terrace and parked in a dark corner away from street lighting, but still within eyeshot of number 22 – a tall terrace Sant guessed could accommodate eight tenants minimum. He turned to Capstick in the driver’s seat.
‘Who do you reckon started looking for Mosley before us?’
‘Haven’t a clue, sir. Maybe a friend or relative?’
Sant shook his head. ‘The people he’s close to would know where he lived – or how to contact him at least.’
‘And it wasn’t Dryden because he was killed four days ago.’
‘True, but it could’ve been another officer.’
Capstick took off his specs to polish the lenses. ‘Who do you have in mind?’
‘There are two possibilities. An officer fond of Dryden suspects Mosley may be implicated in his murder and plans to confront him. Or an officer with something to hide wants to get at Mosley before we do, to shut him up or pay him off.’
Capstick sniggered. ‘You’ve got a finer sense of plotting than the next Bond film.’
‘Remember my favourite saying,’ said Sant. ‘Truth is stranger than fiction. You’ll soon learn that much, partner.’
Nothing much happened for an hour as the two detectives debated the news of the day. Then, just after nine thirty, they looked out of the cloudy Punto windscreen and saw a taxi pull up.
A few seconds later three men got out and paraded in single file through the narrow gate of number 22, each carrying a takeaway bag. Chinese fried noodles. No VPH pizzas tonight.
‘There he is, sir. The one in front. Fits the description of Mosley. Black leather jacket, black denim jeans, quiff.’
Sant spat out his toothpick. ‘That’s him, and thanks to young Zach we’re one step ahead of the competition pursuing him. Your job is simple for the foreseeable future, Capstick. Shadow Mosley. Go wherever he goes and don’t lose him. We need to know what he’s up to, where, when and why.’
Capstick studied the face of experience sitting next to him. ‘Could Mosley have killed Dryden in revenge for a brutal arrest, sir?’
‘It’s a motive, I grant you, but killing six other people at the same time seems a bit extreme. What’s certain is that Mosley is caught up in something, but now’s not the time to bring him in. Now’s time to follow, listen, learn.’
3
Your name is Nigel Fleming.
You are seventy years old. A fraction older. Age never lies.
Once upon a time you were known by a different name.
A name you no longer use. Or care to remember.
A name you can’t shake off – lashed to an incident you can’t shake off either. An incident you’ve spent half your life coping with.
But you can’t. So you revel in distraction.
You play golf. You’d like to play more often. The pain after eighteen holes is excruciating. So you stick to nine.
You don’t tell anyone about the pain. Or the cause of it.
You are married to a lovely person. Mrs Fleming. Her Christian name escapes you.
You have three children who are no longer children but working-adults-stroke-parents not bothered about old gits like you, thank you very much.
You watch the telly. Your favourite pastime. You watch the football, the cricket, the dogs, the horses, the rugby, the golf and the weather.
But most of all, you watch the news. The local news, the national news, the world news.
Politics, business, crime.
The same news. Every day.
TICK TOCK TICK TOCK.
On the hour. Every hour.
You want to remember. You also want to forget.
TICK TOCK TICK TOCK.
You cannot get to sleep.
Sant had a working knowledge of Skype, but getting it to work was another matter entirely. With the help of a young DC with IT diplomas coming out of her ears he managed to connect video and voice to his partner on stakeout duty, though frequently the screen froze, oddly improving Capstick’s facial charm.
‘How is our friend Mr Mosley?’
‘Mostly housebound, sir,’ came back a Dalek-like voice, ‘except I followed him on foot to the local food store.’
‘You didn’t adorn a monocle, tweed jacket and walking stick, did you?’
Capstick’s laughter mutated into a sinister snarl. ‘Hardly, sir, but it’s amazing what a hoodie and a pair of shades can do.’
‘What did he buy?’
‘Tins of beans – hot dogs – five loaves of long-lasting bread.’
‘Sounds like the staple student diet to me.’
Capstick nodded frantically. ‘And he topped up his phone at the counter to the tune of fifty pounds.’
Sant’s brow furrowed. ‘Surely he should be on a contract if his pay-as-you-go phone’s costing him that much.’
More hysterical nodding. ‘Right – the credit’s worth twice the handset.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Not really… except the hairstyle.’
‘Nothing wrong with your hair, Capstick.’
Another snarl rose up from the ether. ‘Not mine, sir. Mosley’s.’
‘I thought quiffs were the in-thing these days.’
‘Maybe so, but we’ve underestimated that quiff. At closer range it looks more like a spiked ridge firmed up by Gum Gel.’
‘Might be a punk – in which case he’s a couple of generations late.’
‘The leather jacket is studded with spikes, too. Oh, and I may’ve been mistaken, but I thought I saw a small Swastika badge pinned to his collar – a throwback from the days of hooligan mobs.’
‘Don’t worry, Capstick. I’m not asking you to fight him – not yet.’
Sant closed the atrocious line and meditated for a while. Could Mosley be a far right Nazi activist? If the answer was yes, and if Mosley had featured at the centre of Dryden’s radar owing to his close ties with Chloe, then why was an intelligent student researching the history of race relations hanging around with a neo-fascist? It didn’t make much sense, but then again, what did?
His meditations were disturbed by the onset of his Jake Thackray ringtone. It was Hardaker. The Chiefman was clearly still annoyed at Sant for not informing him of the dust-free bare patch in the loft of the Dufton Approach address of Chloe’s former neighbour. As it turned out, a preliminary search of the premises by the forensic team under Hardaker’s command revealed nothing of interest apart from that dust-free patch.
‘Any ideas what was removed from up there?’ Hardaker probed.
‘None whatsoever,’ Sant replied, ‘though I’d rule out the Burmese Royal Ruby.’
The Chiefman grunted and rang off without a laugh.
Sant set off for the canteen in search of Holdsworth. It was getting late in the day and he wanted her company for the return encounter with Jake Downing. But when he got there she was nowhere to be seen.
On the way back he passed Gilligan’s office door and noticed the door was ajar. Perhaps now was the time to raise the subject of wasteful duplication of tasks after their – uncoordinated and insensitive – duplicate interviews with Mr and Mrs Andrews. He took six steps backwards and peered through the gap, affecting an air of neighbourly curiosity on the off chance the Old Man noticed his presence and booked him for illicit spying.
But his view of Gilligan was concealed by the erect figure of Chief Constable Lister, his back facing Sant, a pointed finger jabbing in all directions as if force-feeding Gilligan the latest weather. Then Lister moved away and Sant saw the look of consternation on the Old Man’s podgy face. Lister had flown into a rage about something and Gilligan was doing his best to absorb the blows without pleading mercy.
Sant struggled to catch what the CC w
as saying, but what rang as clear as a bell was the tone of desperation. These men at the very top of the police force were at their wits’ end. Gilligan was playing his pathetic arse-licking role, eager as always to appease his boss. Whereas Lanky Lister was eager in another way. Eager to get to the crux of the matter; eager for answers.
Sant felt strangely sorry for Gilligan, but the feeling was swiftly banished by the thought of being spotted. He walked on without delay and made a mental note to bump into Lister – in a deliberate way. He wasn’t sure how he would broach the subject with the chief constable without appearing insubordinate. But somehow he had to.
One thing was sure. It was no use trying to coax the facts out of tight-lipped Gilligan and his shit-smelling breath.
They drove from HQ to the Headingley home of Jake Downing, about half a mile from Capstick’s Granby Terrace stakeout of Oliver Mosley. Holdsworth did the driving while Sant laid back in her 1979 Jaguar XJS and chewed toothpicks. They usually spoke little when on the move, but Holdsworth’s Stanks Lane South discoveries were well worth the effort of conversation.
‘We knocked on twenty-eight doors,’ said Holdsworth, ‘and only two residents recalled anything about the police raid of November 1984. Sadly, the first woman we spoke to suffers from dementia, so we can rule out her testimony.’
‘And the other?’
‘She’s a more reliable source, though she was just ten when the incident occurred and has witnessed more than a few raids over the years.’
Sant computed the years in his head. ‘So this woman must be forty-one now.’
‘Yes, and her memory is as sharp as a razor. When I showed her the news report, she recognised it straight away – said she was so excited at the time about her street being on the news that she’d actually kept a clipping of the same report.’
‘She’s kept it over all these years?’
Holdsworth adjusted her rear-view mirror. ‘Unfortunately not. But anyway, she remembered a discrepancy when first reading the account of the raid, compared to what she’d seen with her naked eye. She’s adamant it wasn’t just a man but a woman, too, who was arrested that night. It was dark, of course, but she remembers seeing a woman’s face by police torchlight as officers searched the grounds. Anyway, this long-time resident now lives in a different house on the same street, but she showed us where she used to live and the bedroom window she looked out of that night – well, it’s situated right opposite the council flats the police raided. She’s got a vivid image of what she saw engraved on her brain. She didn’t know the woman she witnessed being escorted to a police van because this woman was new to the area.’
‘Does that check out with the records?’
‘You’re fast, Carl, but not as fast as me. The first thing I did was cross-reference the council-housing records for Stanks Lane South, and sure enough, a woman living alone resided at an address corresponding to one of those council flats between April 1984 and November of the same year.’
‘Did this eyewitness recall anything about the arrested woman?’
The detective sergeant shook her head. ‘She had this vague notion that the woman must’ve been some kind of writer because she worked from home and used a typewriter constantly – that was all.’
‘And the man?’
‘Probably a boyfriend staying the night. This witness only recalls one thing about him. It stuck in her memory. She thinks he had ptosis.’
‘A drooping eyelid.’
She gave her boss a curious look. ‘Anyone you know?’
‘Professor Neil Rothwell – one of Chloe’s university tutors – has a drooping left eyelid, but where he might fit into the picture is a mystery to me. How common is ptosis, Holdsworth?’
‘Don’t ask me – I’m no eye surgeon.’
Sant flicked a mangled toothpick out of the car window. ‘I suppose we can assume the woman left Stanks Lane South shortly after the raid on her property. Though as yet we haven’t found a criminal record or any document relating to that raid, which suggests the woman was innocent of any wrongdoing.’ He paused for thought, then asked, ‘What was her name?’
Holdsworth performed the tricky manoeuvre of extracting her phone from her handbag while dodging fellow drivers on the rush-hour dash home.
‘Here it is,’ she said at last as the handbag slipped from her lap. ‘Sheila Morrison.’
He stared at the name. ‘Alias Susan Smith, one-time neighbour of Chloe Lee and Dryden’s snitch just moments before he got on that bus and all hell broke loose.’
‘You think so?’
Sant didn’t answer. He desired a long bout of watchful meditation to calm his muddled mind as it tried to juggle the past with the present. The vibrating steel chassis of Holdsworth’s roaring XJS – dodging nightlife pleasure-seekers by a matter of inches – wasn’t exactly the peaceful place for it.
As they approached the Beckett’s Park Drive address of Jake Downing, Sant translated his thoughts into words for his own hearing.
‘Couples argue all the time.’
Holdsworth greeted him with wide dark eyes.
‘Not you and me, Holdsworth. We never argue, do we?’
‘Only when you’re a pain in the backside.’
‘Okay, we agree to disagree some of the time, but we’re not like your typical lovebirds, quarrelling over this and that and the weather forecast.’
She pouted. ‘Since when have we been lovebirds, Carl?’
Sant laughed. ‘Quite right. You and me are partners in the fight against crime: nothing more, nothing less. Over time we learn to trust each other, just like I trusted Dryden and so did you. But partners in love with each other – genuine lovers – only refer to themselves as a couple where they acquire that togetherness; that telling and mutual affection.’
‘Aha,’ she smiled. ‘I see where you’re going with this.’
‘Downing thought of himself and Chloe as a couple. Couples argue all the time. He made a great play of pretending Chloe was just one in a long line of his many girls; one more taxi to ride and then be rid of. But their relationship was no short-term fling. I’m sure of it.’
‘He meant more to her than she to him.’
Sant gnawed at a new toothpick. ‘But it was Downing who used the word couple. The reverse is surely closer to the truth. No matter what the arrogant git would like us to think, Chloe left a lasting impression on him – she wanted the split more than he did.’
Holdsworth twirled fingers through permed brunette hair. She carried that dark Mediterranean air about her. A look of unerring confidence Sant found impulsively appealing. In his mind’s eye he fantasised about him and her in carnal embrace – her slenderness, tanned skin and sharp jawline only amplifying the fantasy.
He snapped out of it abruptly, repulsed by the erotic image and by himself for imagining it. Maybe his meditating ways were slipping perilously, his self-control failing him.
‘Could Downing have killed Chloe in jealous rage for breaking his heart?’ she wondered.
Sant shook his head. ‘He doesn’t look the killer type to me.’
He indicated the property they were looking for and Holdsworth steered her XJS – a marked improvement on his Fiesta and Capstick’s Punto – into the nearest space along an avenue lined with sycamores.
They were in luck. Despite the darkness, Jake Downing was shooting hoops in the garden of the semi-detached he rented with his student pals. Sant came from behind him, stole the basketball, slam-dunked it first time. Still in good shape.
Jake was half-amused, half-annoyed. ‘So you’ve tracked me down, officers. I kind of expected a van load of your troopers scurrying down to London to snare me in their net. Care for a drink at my humble abode?’
Sant ignored the offer. ‘Let’s get down to business, Mr Downing. When last we spoke you mentioned an altercation you’d had with Chloe at your birthday party – the last time you saw her. What did you argue about?’
Jake retrieved the ball, bouncing it hard on
the tarmac a couple of times before aiming for the hoop and missing – handsomely. ‘I’ve been racking my brains trying to remember, Inspector, believe me I have. Must be going senile.’
Holdsworth interjected. ‘Jake, if we’re ever going to find Chloe, alive or otherwise, we need every little detail you can help us with.’
The youngster kicked the unruly ball away and sat down hard on an iron-grey aluminium chair.
‘I’m not being awkward. My memory of that night is patchy to say the least. I was a little over-lubricated at the time.’ He hesitated before saying: ‘The gist of it, I guess, was to do with the mother.’
‘Chloe’s mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you and her mother not get along?’
Jake bit on his lower lip. ‘Quite the opposite. We get along just fine. But Chloe was worried about her mother. You see, Vanessa is… well, not much older than Chloe.’
‘Sixteen years older to be precise,’ said Sant.
The young man nodded. ‘She had Chloe when she was no more than a child. She was hard up in those days, her and her ex.’
‘How do you know?’ said Holdsworth.
‘Vanessa told me all about it. She got quite emotional. You see, everything came at once for her. Leaving school with no qualifications, her own parents separating, her best friend killing herself. Throw in an unplanned pregnancy and bob’s your uncle.’
Sant was taken aback by Jake’s response. Perhaps the youthful stallion had compassion for others after all. ‘So why were you arguing with Chloe about her mother?’
