Death on the Levels

by David Hodges

  ‘DS Kate Lewis and DC Hayden Lewis, Mr Brookes,’ she replied.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘The Lewis duo, eh?’ he said. ‘Keeping it in the family, are you?’

  Kate smiled. ‘We are here to tap your memory, Mr Brookes.’

  He seemed to deflate. ‘Memory?’ he muttered. ‘What memory? Most of it’s gone now.’

  She paused a moment. ‘You were a reporter once, remember that?’ she went on. ‘You carried out a sexual abuse inquiry at a place called Talbot Court.’

  He thought for a moment and then his eyes gleamed. ‘Now there’s a blast from the past,’ he replied. ‘Can of worms, that one was. You reinvestigating it?’

  ‘Not exactly, but it’s very relevant to a current murder inquiry we are conducting. What can you tell us about it?’

  He shook his head, his expression sombre. ‘Never really managed to get to the bottom of that business. Just scratched the surface. Not allowed to, you see. Too many people in high places involved. Buggers shut down everything.’

  Then abruptly the light seemed to go out of his eyes and his face changed, exhibiting confusion.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked suddenly. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Kate started, thrown by the unexpected question and the sudden change in his demeanour.

  ‘We’re police officers,’ Hayden said gently, immediately cottoning on to the problem. ‘You were telling us about Talbot Court.’

  Brookes shook his head. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are you asking me?’

  Kate followed Hayden’s example. ‘It happened many years ago,’ she encouraged. ‘You were a reporter and you investigated a child sex abuse inquiry at an orphanage called Talbot Court.’

  The old man’s face twisted into a heavy frown and he pressed the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb.

  ‘Talbot Court,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? There was a fire, I think, and the place burned down. Principal took off. I found him somewhere. Can’t remember where—’

  He brightened. ‘There was a stabbing, that was it. Some kid got sent down for killing a teacher. Can’t recall the poor little bugger’s name either.’ He shook his head irritably. ‘The kid, not the teacher, I mean. Teacher wasn’t a poor little bugger at all. He was touching the kids up, wasn’t he? Dirty—’

  He broke off. ‘Have they offered you tea?’

  Kate took a deep breath. ‘Yes, Mr Brookes, they’ve offered us tea, but we didn’t want any. Now, can you remember the name of the child who was sent down?’

  His face went blank again. ‘Down? Who was sent down – where?’

  ‘Talbot Court?’ she encouraged. ‘The stabbing? You investigated it—’

  ‘Bad business, you know,’ he cut in, suddenly back on track. ‘I reckon that the Principal or one of the others started the fire to get rid of all the evidence. Nothing left, you see,’ and he tapped his forehead with the index finger of one hand, ‘but it’s all up here, you know. Filed away.’

  Yet another frown. ‘They’re a long time with your tea. You might get a cake if you’re lucky.’ He straightened up and stared around the room. ‘Nurse, where’s that tea?’ he shouted.

  Kate clenched her fists tightly in her lap. So near and yet so far. She mentally forced herself to count to ten.

  ‘Do you remember George?’ Hayden said quietly. ‘You must remember George?’

  ‘George?’ Brookes echoed, his eyes sharpening again. ‘Mad, you know. Only a kid, but mad nevertheless. Someone said the father and his sisters – the aunts – made the kid like that too. Religion at the back of it. Bible-bashers, the lot of ’em – just like their father had been before them. Turned the youngster into a maladjusted freak.’

  Kate felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

  ‘Who were these aunts, Les?’ Hayden asked. ‘Can you remember their names? Was one of them called Elsie?’

  Brookes nodded. ‘Think that was her, but she was the weak one – just went along with what the others said. Iris, though, she was something else. Hard case, that one. Bloody solicitor too.’

  He leaned forward. ‘She persuaded the other sisters to have George put into the orphanage when the parents were killed in that car crash, you know. Said the youngster was too unruly and had to be put away. I reckon money was at the back of it – some sort of inheritance.’

  He shook his head sadly. ‘Once in Talbot Court, George became cannon fodder, see? Grace – yes, that was his name – offered the poor mite up to his bigwig friends on party nights. Politicians, judges, councillors, all the bent ones got invites to Talbot to sample one of Grace’s treats. Couldn’t prove it, though. Too many powerful people implicated. Got shut down.’

  He yawned. ‘Bit tired. Need my nap.’

  Kate tried to tease more out of him, conscious of the fact that she was running out of time.

  ‘Do you remember George’s surname, Les?’ she asked. ‘It’s very important.’

  He frowned again. ‘George? I don’t know any George. There’s good old George Formby, of course. Liked his old songs. Good entertainer, he was. Before my time, though.’

  The carer materialized at Kate’s elbow.

  ‘Sorry, Sergeant, but I must call a halt to the questioning now. Les needs his medication and some sleep.’

  Kate nodded. ‘Just a couple more minutes, then we’ll be gone.’

  She leaned forward towards Brookes. ‘Les, do you remember where George went after the murder trial?’

  Brookes squeezed his nose again with finger and thumb. ‘George?’ he repeated slowly. ‘Put away, wasn’t he? Can’t quite recall why …’

  ‘Where did George go, Les, can you remember that?’

  Brookes looked up at her. Suddenly his eyes were alert and focused as the clouds briefly cleared from his brain.

  ‘One of them juvenile detention places, I was told – youth units or something—’

  ‘You mean a young offenders’ institution?’

  ‘Yes, that sounds about right. Didn’t last long there, though. Crazy kid attacked another person and got sent to some hospital or other. Call them secure units now, you know, or special hospitals. Still nuthouses in my book, though. That’s where George went – some special hospital.’

  He sighed. ‘Mad, you know,’ he went on, repeating what he had said earlier. ‘Stabbed someone – a teacher, I think – after being abused. I investigated the case. I was a journalist, you see. Got shut down, though.’

  ‘I’m afraid that will have to do,’ the carer interjected again. ‘Come on, Les, time for your sleep. I’ll give you a hand up.’

  ‘The name of the hospital, Les?’ Kate persisted desperately. ‘Surely you can remember that?’

  ‘That’s quite enough for one day,’ the carer said sternly, as she assisted the old man to his feet. ‘He’s confused as it is.’

  Kate and Hayden had to watch helplessly as Brookes was led away, muttering about not having had his tea.

  ‘Bugger it!’ Kate breathed. ‘Back to square one.’

  ‘And we haven’t even been offered a cup of tea,’ Hayden added, mimicking Brookes.

  Kate glared at him. ‘Shut it, Hayden,’ she said. ‘Or I’ll leave you here and you can walk back.’

  CHAPTER 15

  Roscoe was finishing off a chicken madras from a silver foil takeaway dish when Kate and Hayden walked back into the SIO’s office. Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of DCI Hennessey amid the ‘fumes.’

  Kate sniffed disapprovingly as she was hit by the powerful odour of the curry when she pushed the door open.

  Roscoe had a pint of beer beside the dish containing the remains of his curry, and he took a swig from the bottle before picking up the foil dish and dropping it into the wastepaper bin beside his desk.

  ‘So, the prodigals return,’ he growled, sitting back in the swivel chair behind the desk usually occupied by Hennessey, trying to pick his teeth with the thin handle of the plastic spoon supplied with his
dinner. ‘About time. So, what have you got?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ Kate replied. ‘Brookes has Alzheimer’s, which means his memory is patchy.’

  ‘How patchy?’

  Kate told him all that the reporter had said and the DI scowled his disapproval. ‘Sod all then really?’ he commented.

  Hayden frowned. ‘Not entirely, guv’nor,’ he retorted. ‘We know a lot more about the background to this business than we did.’

  Roscoe studied him for a moment, his boot-button eyes registering nothing.

  ‘Which still amounts to sweet FA,’ he said. ‘We’re already pretty sure this arsehole is named George and that he’s a nutter, and we’ve already surmised that he was probably an inmate at Talbot Court, who was sexually abused and stiffed his abuser.’

  ‘We didn’t know until now that he was committed to one of the old YOIs after the stabbing and then ended up in a mental hospital,’ Kate threw back at him.

  Roscoe leaned forward across the desk, his gaze hard and uncompromising.

  ‘But we still don’t know the bastard’s name, do we?’ he grated. ‘And if you had tried just a little bit harder with Brookes, we might have managed to get it.’

  He slumped back in his chair and waved Kate to silence as the angry protest started to form on her lips.

  ‘Okay, okay, I’m out of order,’ he said in an unusually contrite tone. ‘You did your best, I know, but we seem to keep heading into one blind alley after another. It turns out that inquiries to trace the RO of the VW Beetle dumped in the lake – an Emrys David Jones apparently, from some village up north – have also drawn a blank. The car has never been reported stolen, but Jones is apparently on holiday, believed to be fishing somewhere in Scotland. None of his neighbours seem to know where he has gone, so we can’t confirm anything. I’ve now called out an underwater search unit team to check that his body is not lying at the bottom of the lake where his car was found.’

  Kate made a grimace at the thought. ‘It’s possible that his car has nothing to do with our case, though,’ she said. ‘Maybe the vicar I interviewed about the intruder in the church cemetery got it wrong and the car he saw was not a Beetle at all. Could be the VW we recovered was simply stolen from Jones’ home while he was away and that the culprit was just some dipstick who nicked it to get back to Somerset.’

  ‘So why would the RO go on his hols and leave his car behind?’

  ‘Perhaps he went to Scotland with a friend in their car or he travelled up by train? Anything’s possible.’

  Roscoe thought about that for a few seconds and gave a curt nod. ‘True, anything is possible,’ he agreed, his usual pugnacious attitude reasserting itself. ‘It’s also possible that Lord Lucan is still alive and living in a house in Bath.’

  Before Kate or Hayden could think of a suitable retort, he stood up and disentangled his jacket from the back of his chair.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve had enough for today, so I’m off for a pint down the road. Either of you feel like joining me?’

  Kate hesitated, her thoughts once more returning to Hayden’s infidelity and regurgitating the acid that had been swirling around in her stomach all day at the prospect of having to go home again.

  ‘Only if you’re buying, guv,’ she replied.

  ‘What about you, Fangio?’ Roscoe barked.

  Hayden flushed. ‘I … I think I’ll have an early night, if you don’t mind,’ he replied lamely.

  Roscoe nodded. ‘As you wish,’ he said, ‘and there’s me thinking you two were joined at the hip.’

  Not anymore, Kate mused bitterly, not anymore.

  *

  The dark figure had remained motionless behind the wheel of the old Land Rover ever since parking up in the alleyway, which ran along the backs of the bungalows forming the cul-de-sac. The strange, dead eyes that had so unnerved Mabel Strong’s carer, Dawn Frobisher, had been fixed rigidly on Elsie Norman’s bungalow for at least half an hour – watching for the slightest movement or sign of life. Finally, satisfied that the police had not left anyone there to guard the place, George climbed out of the vehicle and headed through the moonlit shadows to the rear gate.

  The pane in the kitchen door of the bungalow shattered with a single blow from one gloved fist, and it took only a moment to reach inside and turn the key that had been conveniently left in the lock.

  George well remembered the kitchen. Well remembered creeping up behind Elsie Norman when she went to make her visitor a cup of tea after their little chat in the sitting room about her sisters. Well remembered seizing the old woman by the hair and forcing her to her creaking knees before spinning her over on to her back and pinning her down. Well remembered staring into her face as the bottle of sherry was forced into her mouth, reading the terror in her eyes and hearing the delicious sound of her choking on the stuff. Well remembered finally gripping her by the throat and finishing her off with the thumbs of both hands pressed with extreme force against her windpipe, and the ecstatic moment when those hands felt the feeble struggles cease as the life went out of her.

  Disappointing that the old girl hadn’t realized who her caller really was until it was too late, but age, failing eyesight, and the passage of time had no doubt made that inevitable. Anyway, George had made sure she’d known the identity of her executioner just before she’d choked her last, made sure she’d gone to her Maker knowing that her sins had finally caught up with her – which for Patient 174 was the most satisfying part of it all.

  Now, however, the priority was to find out where Iris Naylor had gone and that meant a thorough search of the bungalow for any note, address book or scrap of paper that might provide the necessary information. The search would have to be meticulous, of course, but there was plenty of time for that, wasn’t there? The whole night if necessary. After all, who would ever suspect that Elsie Norman’s killer would be brazen enough to return to the scene of the crime – and so soon afterwards?

  That was probably true, but Fate can be notoriously fickle and, unbeknown to George, time was already running out. An inquisitive pair of eyes had witnessed the arrival of the intruder and for a while they continued to watch from behind part-closed curtains as the narrow beam of George’s torch went slowly from room to room. Then finally, a hand picked up a telephone handset from its cradle and dialled 999.

  *

  ‘Okay, so what gives?’ Roscoe growled, turning to Kate sitting beside him on the stool in one of the DI’s local hostelries.

  Kate took a sip from the glass of red wine he had bought her and cast him a puzzled glance.

  ‘What gives?’ she echoed. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  He stared into his frothy pint, then studied her critically for a moment. ‘You and that husband of yours,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’

  She started, her stomach lurching. Damn! Was their problem that obvious?

  ‘Nothing’s “going on”, as you put it,’ she lied.

  He took a long pull on his pint, then set it down and wiped off the residue clinging to his moustache with the back of one muscular hand.

  ‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ he said, staring at her intently.

  She forced a grin. ‘Not stupid, guv,’ she replied, ‘but a pain in the arse sometimes – with respect, of course.’

  His expression didn’t change. ‘I haven’t been a copper for nearly thirty years not to notice when things are out of sync,’ he persisted. ‘You two having problems?’

  She flared suddenly. ‘That’s my business,’ she snapped back.

  He was undeterred. ‘No, it bloody well isn’t,’ he retorted, ‘not when it affects your job.’

  ‘My personal life has never affected my job.’

  ‘Maybe not yet, but I can see trouble brewing on the horizon.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like your mind isn’t fully focused on what you are supposed to be doing and sooner or later you’re going to cock up. You’re not with us half the time, woman – I can read it in yo
ur eyes – and what was that crap Hayden came out with just now about having an early night? When have you ever known him to turn down the offer of a pint? The body language said it all. You two were behaving like a pair of stiff-legged dogs, circling each other before taking a bite.’

  Her hand was noticeably trembling as she gulped some more wine and she was conscious of tears welling up in her eyes. She turned her head away from him.

  ‘It’s … it’s nothing, guv, honestly,’ she said. ‘Just a spat, that’s all.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ he snarled. ‘Don’t try that one on me. It’s a lot more than that. But if you two are having a problem, I need to know about it.’

  The tears were trickling down her cheeks now and, left with no alternative, she jerked a handkerchief from her pocket and dried her eyes, aware of the barman at the end of the counter casting curious glances in her direction.

  Roscoe leaned towards her and she felt his hand on her arm as his tone suddenly became uncharacteristically sympathetic.

  ‘Another woman, is it?’ he asked. ‘Been playing away, has he?’

  She gave a quick shake of her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied huskily. ‘Please, just … just leave it, will you?’

  ‘I know you see me as an insensitive prick who’s always on your back,’ he went on, ‘but I’m not the person you think I am and if I can help in any way, you only have to ask.’

  She swallowed hard and dabbed her cheeks again with her handkerchief, then turned her face briefly in his direction, once more forcing a smile.

  ‘Thanks, guv, but there’s nothing anyone else can do. It’s between the two of us.’

  ‘Would you like me to have a word in his shell-like?’

  She froze, her eyes widening.

  ‘No, please – definitely not. That would only make things worse.’

  ‘What about a few days off then to give you some time to sort it all out? I’m sure I can persuade the DCI to agree to—’

  ‘No!’ she cut in, more sharply than she had intended, then added more evenly, ‘Look, no, thank you. I want to see this inquiry through to the end.’

  He grunted and straightened up, draining the rest of his beer in the manner of a man dying of thirst.